Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to translate and culturally adapt the Family Centered Care Assessment Scale (FCCAS) to evaluate family-centered care in the context of Finnish pediatric nursing.

Design and methods: The translation and cultural adaptation were done according guidelines of International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes (ISPOR), which constitute a systematic process including ten phases. The presented research included cognitive interviews conducted with the end user of the scale: parents of hospitalized children.

Results: The FCCAS was successfully translated and culturally adapted to the Finnish context. Translational, clinical and parental expertise were used to develop the scale. Conceptual equivalence was achieved in the translation. In the cultural adaptation, some of the items were modified based on experts’ assessments to make them comprehensible and appropriate to the Finnish culture. The scale showed good evidence of content. Reporting of the study adheres to the COSMIN checklist.

Conclusions: Combining ISPOR guidelines and cognitive interviews are recommended to use in the translation and cultural adaptation process. Nursing staff and parents’ involvement and awareness of family-centered care have been concretized. Systematic translation and cultural adaptation have prepared a Finnish version of the scale for psychometric testing.

Practice implications: The study outlines how rigorous methodological approaches can be applied to the translation and cultural adaptation of a measurement tool. The developed scale includes items which comprehensively cover family-centered care characteristics. In following study, it will be possible to evaluate the extent to which family-centered care is implemented in Finnish pediatric nursing.