Translation, cultural adaptation and evaluation of the psychometric properties of the Falls Risk Awareness Questionnaire (FRAQ): FRAQ-Brazil

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to translate and culturally adapt the Falls Risk Awareness Questionnaire (FRAQ) for the elderly Brazilian population as well as to evaluate the internal consistency and reliability of this instrument. METHOD The study used internationally accepted guidelines for the cross-cultural adaptation process. The questionnaire in its final Portuguese version was then applied to 120 elderly people to assess the measurement properties. The participants were interviewed twice in the first assessment (examiners 1 and 2 at an interval of 30 to 60 minutes) and again after 2 to 7 days by examiner 1. The internal consistency was assessed with Cronbach' s alpha coefficient. To evaluate the reliability of the intra- and inter-evaluators, the Kappa coefficient for categorical variables was used; for numeric variables, the intra-class correlation coefficient (2-way mixed model) and the respective 95% confidence intervals were used in addition to the concordance test of Bland and Altman. RESULTS The Brazilian version of the FRAQ was obtained while maintaining a semantic, idiomatic, cultural and conceptual equivalence. The internal consistency was α=0.95, while for intra-examiner reliability, an intrarater correlation coefficient (ICC-3,1) of 0.91 was obtained with an intra-class correlation Kappa coefficient of 0.89 and a Bland and Altman mean difference (bias) of -0.52. Regarding the inter-examiner reliability, the ICC=0.78, Kappa=0.76 and bias=0.12. CONCLUSIONS The translation and cultural adaptation of the FRAQ for the elderly Brazilian population was successfully performed. The instrument demonstrated excellent reliability and internal consistency, thus making it useful for assessing the perception of the risk of a fall among elderly Brazilians.