Hey everybody! I am a medical student setting up my first questionnaire. I am translating some scale and I am struggleing about the translation of the likert scale answers. Anyone can suggest a platform where I can find translations of different version of them?
Now, for example, I need an Italian and a Spanish version of this 4 point likert scale: ‘strongly agree’, ‘agree’, ‘disagree’, ‘strongly disagree’.
Should I be strict on this or should I just translate by myself and be strict only on items' translation?
Thanks in advance!
Dear Fabio,
Your problem is very simple if I understood you well. You want to administer a medical questionnaire to a population, and you want to use a four-point Lickert scale. Where is the problem? You simply translate into your language 'strongly agree’, ‘agree’, ‘disagree’, ‘strongly disagree’, and position them horizontally in a table. Once you have done this, you write your questions top-down. If you want to translate somebody else' s questions, you may do that on condition that you acknowledge it. Or you can write your own questions.
However, I advise you to use a 5-point scale, including something like: neuter. Because in a 4-point scale you lose this amount of data relative to people who do not want to agree or disagree with you on your research.
Dear Zouheir, thank you very much for your answer!
I am translating into different languages some international scales in order to validate them. While for the time I am using the back translation, concerning the answers I found many different scale and I do not know how strict I need to follow the original one. For example, the original scale I am working on is a 4 likert point scale. I am not sure I can add a 5th item, can't I?
And I can actually translate "strongly agree" in different way. Since it is the first time I translate a scale and I saw behind it there are much more rules I expected, I was not sure about the answers too.
Dear Fabio,
Since you are only translating scales, you have no authority to add a fifth item to the scale. The translation should be pragmatic, i.e. should follow the way things are expressed in a particular language. However, I don't think that with these expressions that you are translating there is a problem in translating them. I know that they translate literally into Arabic (موافق بشدة) and French (tout à fait d'accord).
Dear Zouheir,
thank you very much for your help. Indeed I was trying to be very pragmatic. Your help was very valuable to me.
Best regards!
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