Citation

Van Loey NE, van de Schoot RAGJ, Gerdin B, Faber AW, Sjöberg F, Willebrand M. J. Trauma Acute Care Surg. 2013; 74(5): 1321-1326.

Affiliation

From the Department of Psychosocial and Behavioural Research (N.E.V.L.), Association of Dutch Burns Centres, Beverwijk; Departments of Clinical and Health Psychology (N.E.V.L.), and Methods and Statistics (R.V.D.S.), Utrecht University, Utrecht; and Department of Clinical Psychology (A.W.F.), Martini Hospital, Groningen, the Netherlands; Department of Surgical Sciences (B.G.), Plastic Surgery, Uppsala University, Sweden; Department of Neuroscience, Psychiatry (M.W.), Uppsala University, Sweden; Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Linköping University, and the Burn Centre; and Departments of Hand, Plastic Surgery and Intensive Care (F.S.), Linköping University Hospital, Sweden.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins)

DOI

10.1097/TA.0b013e31828cca84

PMID

23609285

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The Burn Specific Health Scale Brief (BSHS-B), which is the only multidimensional measure to evaluate burn-specific aspects of health status, has previously been validated in several languages across the world. However, the stability of the underlying construct was not cross-culturally evaluated. The current study reports on measurement invariance across two samples of Swedish- and Dutch- speaking patients with burns. METHODS: In a prospective study, 231 and 275 Swedish and Dutch-Belgian patients with burns, completed the BSHS-B at 9 or 12 months, respectively, after burn. Using a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis, measurement invariance across languages (Swedish and Dutch) was tested. RESULTS: The results of the confirmatory factor analysis in the total sample revealed that the scale structure for the earlier reported three-factor structure and the original nine-factor structure was adequate. However, an eight-factor structure in which hand function and simple abilities were merged provided the best fit. This structure was used to test measurement invariance across the two language groups. The two-group outcomes testing measurement invariance across Swedish- and Dutch-speaking patients indicated a stable, configural invariance. CONCLUSION: The BSHS-B seems to function uniformly across both language groups. The BSHS-B can be used to compare cross-cultural results in both countries. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Prognostic study, level III.

Language: en