Adaptação cultural e evidências de validade de conteúdo da scale for the assessment of negative symptoms e da scale for the assessment of positive symptoms para o português brasileiro

Abstract

Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS) and Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS) aim to evaluate negative and positive symptoms, respectively, in people with psychotic symptoms. The SANS evaluates negative symptoms such as affective blunting, alogia, avolition-apathy, anhedonia and attention. The SAPS evaluate positive symptoms, such as hallucinations, delusions, behavior and disorganized thinking. Objectives: The main objective of this thesis was to translate, culturally adapt and verify evidence of content validity of the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms and Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms scales into Brazilian Portuguese. To answer this objective, three articles were elaborated, one theoretical and two empirical. The theoretical article aimed to systematically investigate the literature on the use of the SANS and SAPS. The second article aimed to translate and culturally adapt the SANS to Brazilian Portuguese and obtain evidence of validity based on the content. The third article aimed to translate and culturally adapt the SAPS into Brazilian Portuguese and obtain evidence of validity based on the content. Methods: In the theoretical article, a systematic review was built, using the recommendations of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyzes (PRISMA). The search for articles was carried out by two judges in the PsycARTICLES, Web of Science, Medline and Scopus databases. After applying the inclusion / exclusion criteria, 31 articles were retrieved and analyzed. In the empirical articles, the method was organized in two stages: 1) Translation and adaptation of the instrument; and 2) Calculation of the Content Validity Index (ICV). Eleven professionals with extensive experience in the mental health field participated in the second stage of the research. Results: The first study found that most articles used the scales to assess the intensity of positive and negative symptoms, correlating the SANS and SAPS scores with other variables, as well as to verify the effect of drug and non-drug interventions. Regarding the quality of the articles, it was observed that only a small portion of the articles was published in journals with a high impact factor and only seven articles used randomization procedures. The findings of the SAPS translation and adaptation study show that 30 of its items obtained ICV = 1.00, 4 obtained ICV = 0.82 and only 1 obtained ICV = 0.64. Regarding the levels of agreement, the results were also above 81%. Conclusions: It can be concluded that the SANS and SAPS instruments are applicable and appropriate tools for evaluating positive and negative symptoms in different contexts. The results showed that the SANS and SAPS scales are suitable for use in the Brazilian population, as they showed a high degree of agreement between the evaluators, and good content validity indexes. Further studies are suggested to verify other evidence of the validity of these instruments.