Cross-cultural adaptation into Spanish of the MULTIPleS scale in elderly patients with multimorbidity

Abstract

Background and objective: The Multimorbidity Illness Perceptions Scale (MULTIPleS) analyzes whether suffering from two or more chronic diseases affects the quality of life, cost and clinical results of patients. The objective was to translate and cross-culturally adapt the MULTIPleS scale into Spanish.

Methods: Direct translation and back translation followed by synthesis and adaptation by a third translator and a panel of experts to guarantee the conceptual, semantic and content equivalence between both versions. Subsequently, a comprehensibility analysis was performed on a sample of patients.

Results: The Spanish version of the MULTIPleS scale was obtained. The medium degree of difficulty in the direct translation and the back translation of the title and the questions showed a low difficulty. In the synthesis and adaptation phase, 6 discrepancies were resolved. The comprehensibility analysis was performed in 10 patients, achieving the established requirement (> 80%) for all items.

Conclusions: This is the first cross-cultural adaptation to Spanish of the MULTIPleS scale. Having this back-translated scale will make it possible to analyze patients' perception of the disease and thus apply improvements in their healthcare.

Keywords: Adaptación transcultural; Cross-cultural adaptation; Escala; Multimorbidity; Multimorbilidad; Scale; Traducción; Translations.