Cross-cultural adaptation and evidence of validity of the interprofessional collaboration scale (IPC-BR) for Brazil

We aimed to perform cross-cultural adaptation of the Interprofessional Collaboration Scale (IPC-BR) and to evaluate evidence of its validity for the Brazilian hospital context. The research consisted of six steps: translation of the instrument into the new language, synthesis of the translated versions, back-translation, synthesis of the versions in the original language, evaluation of the syntheses by an expert committee, and pilot testing or pretesting and validation of the internal structure of the items of the instrument. The pilot testing involved 4 translators, 14 judges, and 30 healthcare professionals; the validation of the internal structure involved 686 professionals including nurses, physicians and physiotherapists. Translation and cross-cultural adaptation revealed no significant changes or discrepancies in meaning from the original model. Exploratory, confirmatory, and parallel factor analyses confirmed that the Brazilian scale is unidimensional. We found unidimensional characteristics and satisfactory factor loadings, with good levels of reliability, which makes the instrument provide consistent and reliable internal evidence for measuring the construct. Thus, the possibility of using it to assess interprofessional collaboration among different target groups in the Brazilian scenario was confirmed.