I am currently reading on the validation and cultural adaptation of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) in different countries and client populations. I wonder whether in the case of individuals who are more fluent in English but still reside in a country which is culturally diverse (from the country in which the test was originally developed), the back translation of the final adapted version (versus the original version) needs to be utilised. This is queried given that the process of adaptation involves retaining meaning, as opposed to literal translation, and also modifying the content with items more culturally relevant. Information is provided on the process of translating and culturally adapting a standardised test, but I did not manage to find specifications for using the English version in Bilingual populations.
Moreover, if the validity of the MoCA was to be assessed in specific populations (e.g. stroke patients), would the back translation of the test also need to be validated on a normative population first?
Thanks beforehand.
This question is controversial and needs highly professional consultations of testing specialists as well as translation studies experts. It seems to me that the problem is not a language proficiency one; it is rather a cultural competence issue. You can use a highly professional and culturally adapted translated version of the test (most appropriately), but, in this case, you cannot easily establish its validity; simply because it is a new test. In this case you perhaps need to search for similar studies in education or psycholinguistics, in particular, to dissolve opacity and arrive at reliable conclusions.
Wish you all the best.
Mariella: Assessment instruments are normed from specific populations, and therefore assess those populations. As Falih notes, adapting and/or translating normed tests is highly controversial, the reason being that this invalidates them.
For overall linguistic assessment of multilinguals, see this article ‘Assessment of communication abilities in multilingual children’, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17549507.2018.1392607
And, for cultural issues in clinical assessment, the references quoted in this blogpost, ‘Speech-language clinics: cultural meeting places?’, https://beingmultilingual.blogspot.com/2013/02/speech-language-clinics-cultural.html
Best
Madalena
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Linguistics
- Philology
- Language
- English