Observation of Neonatal Behavior: Cross-cultural Adaptation of the Newborn Behavioral Observations

OBJECTIVE To conduct the cross-cultural adaptation for Brazilian Portuguese of the Newborn Behavioral Observations (NBO), a new resource for observing neonatal behavior and sharing information with parents. METHODS Methodological study of translation and cultural adaptation of the NBO system, which includes the Recording Form, with 18 items, the Recording Guidelines, with instructions to score each item, the Summary Form, to record suggestions based on the observation, and the Parent Questionnaire, to record the parents' experiences. The adaptation process followed international recommendations for cross-cultural adaptation of health care protocols, which included requesting permission from the authors, translation, back translation and pre-test, followed by external evaluators who scored the quality of the adaptation, which was analyzed quantitatively. The quality of the adaptation of the instruments' items was evaluated by the index of agreement between evaluators for conceptual and cultural equivalence. RESULTS Expert panel evaluation showed that the cross-cultural adaptation of the NBO protocols was both well understood conceptually and culturally appropriate, with 140 (77.8%) items presenting concordance index higher than 90% for conceptual and cultural equivalence. Items that did not reach adequate level of agreement were revised according to experts' suggestions. CONCLUSIONS The Brazilian version of the NBO system can be safely used, since the methodology was rigorous enough to ensure equivalence between the original and translated versions. The NBO should be tried in clinical practice, as it can contribute to improve the quality of maternal and child care.