Translation, Cross-Cultural Adaptation, and Validation of the Parkinson's Disease Quality of Life Questionnaire (PDQL), the “PDQL-BR”, into Brazilian Portuguese

Translate, culturally adapt, and validate the “Parkinson's Disease Quality of Life” (PDQL) BR, into Brazilian Portuguese. Fifty-two patients answered the PDQL-BR. Twenty-one patients answered the PDQL-BR again 14 days later. The UPDRS and HY scale was applied. Validation was evaluated using psychometric properties, checking the quality of the data, reliability, and validity. Quality of the data was evaluated based on occurrence of ceiling and floor effects. Reliability was evaluated based on: internal consistency of an item, homogeneity, and reproducibility. Validation was checked through the evaluation of convergent and discriminatory validation. There was no ceiling and floor effect. When evaluating reliability, items 20, 30, and 37 showed correlation of 0.34, 0.26, and 0.37, respectively, to your scale; the other items was higher than 0.4. The alpha Cronbach coefficient was higher than 0.7 for most domains. There was good reproducibility. There were no meaningful changes in the PDQL-BR translation and cross-cultural adaptation. 1. Introduction Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by the occurrence of motor and nonmotor symptoms. Motor symptoms include arrest tremors, stiffness, bradykinesia, and instabilities in posture and gait. Nonmotor symptoms include autonomic dysfunctions that result in changes in blood pressure control and intestinal function. The disease shows an inevitably progressive course and an increasing number of other symptoms. Frequently, Parkinson’s disease patients go through periods of depression and dementia. In more advanced stages, complications caused by treatment with dopaminergic drugs result in fluctuations in motor function [1]. The symptoms, comorbidities, and complications of treatment restrict the autonomy and the welfare of affected individuals, leading to prejudices in their professional, social, and emotional lives [2]. In order to evaluate multidimensional features such as those described above, recently special attention has been given to evaluating the quality of life (QL) and, more specifically the perception of welfare in light of the state of the patient health, which has lead to the development of the Health-Related Quality of Life (HRQL) surveys [3]. The development of the HRQL has allowed health care providers to determine a better approach to caring for the patient; the HRQL also places more value on considering the needs and the expectations of the patient and provides a comparison among different groups [3]. The HRQL instruments are divided into two groups: generic and