Abstract

This study was designed to translate the instrument used to assess the risk and protective predictors of Coronary Heart Disease (CHD) into the Urdu language and to determine their psychometric properties. The majority of the Pakistani population lacks fluency in English and that reprimands a toll that must be used in the indigenous local language. The investigation included 42 participants while the entire process of translation carried 10 sequential stages. The study sample included 20 bilingual cases, ages ranging from 35 to 55 years, who were matched on gender and obtained from the community controls group. Psychosocial measures proposed on the basis of literature review to assess risk and protective predictors of CHD included: The Perceived Stress Scale (Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, 1983); Center for Epidemiological Studies Short Depression Scale (Radloff, 1977); State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spielberger, 1983); State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (Spielberger, 1988); Personality Deviance Scale-Revised (Bedford & Foulds, 1978); Revised Life Orientation Test (Scheier, Carver, & Bridges,1994); Perceived Locus of Control Scale and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (Zimet, Dahlem, Zimet, & Farley, 1988). To ensure a rigorous process of translation and to achieve equivalence between the original version and translated versions of scales, Vallerand’s (1989) steps for instrument translation with slight modification were employed. The results showed that there were no significant differences in the mean scores of English and Urdu versions on any of the scales, suggesting similar dissemination of the content of the scales in Urdu and English. Pearson correlation analysis between pre (English) and post-administration (Urdu) revealed a significant positive correlation demonstrating reasonably high validity for all the scales. The alpha coefficients revealed moderate to high level of internal consistency of all scales for both administrations respectively. The translated instruments can be used in the routine medical assessment to assess the risk and protective predictors of CHD.