Brazilian version of the instrument of environmental assessment Craig Hospital Inventory of Environmental Factors (CHIEF): translation, cross-cultural adaptation and reliability

BACKGROUND Environmental factors are essential for the characterization of human functioning and disability; however, the shortage of standardized instruments to assess environmental factors has limited the design of scientific investigations directed at identifying barriers to and facilitators of social participation of people with disabilities. OBJECTIVES To translate to Brazilian Portuguese, cross-culturally adapt, and verify the reliability of an environmental assessment questionnaire, entitled Craig Hospital Inventory of Environmental Factors (CHIEF). METHOD The questionnaire was translated to Portuguese, analyzed, translated back to English, and compared with the original version. The final version (CHIEF-BR) was submitted to 47 caregivers of children and adolescents with cerebral palsy (CP). The intra-rater reliability was tested using quadratic kappa and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC), through interviews of 23 caregivers drawn from the total sample, on two occasions 10 days apart. Results : During submission of the questionnaires, it was observed that examples were needed in order to facilitate the understanding of the questions related to the politics sub-scale. Quadratic kappa showed that test-retest reliability of each question varied from 0.28 to 1.0 for the frequency score and from 0.30 to 0.98 for the magnitude score. Intraclass correlation coefficients for total scores showed high consistency indices (ICC ≥ 0.92) for test-retest. CONCLUSION The Brazilian version of the CHIEF was reproducible and applicable to the study sample. It may serve as an instrument to characterize the environmental barriers as well as a way to document the effects of interventions aimed at minimizing the impact of such barriers on the participation of children and adolescents with CP.