Cultural and health system adaptation of the Primary Care Assessment Tools for the Argentinian context

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The Primary Care Assessment Tools (PCAT) measure the degree of achievement of the functions of primary care (PC) from different perspectives. OBJECTIVE: To obtain versions of the PCAT for users (children and adults), care providers and care centers, which are both semantically and conceptually equivalent to the original versions, and appropriate to the population and health system in Argentina. METHODS: Cross-cultural adaptation by the following steps: (1) direct translation and linguistic adaptation; (2) content review and adaptation to the health system by local experts and the theoretical model’s author; (3) back-translation and comparison with the original version; and( 4) pre-test with users and health professionals. Semantic, cultural, practical equivalence, understanding and feasibility of the questionnaires were assessed. RESULTS: Almost half of the items were modified after forward translation. Items belonging to the PC domains were low or moderately modified, and one of them was removed. Questions to characterize centers, providers and health care coverage suffered major changes. CONCLUSIONS: It was possible to obtain PCAT versions adapted to Argentina and equivalent to the original. Their validity must be tested in future studies.