IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aph/ajpbhl/10.2105-ajph.70.12.1273_9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The effect of inadequate language translation on Hispanics' responses to health surveys

Author

Listed:
  • Berkanovic, E.

Abstract

Data bearing on the effect of language of the interview on Hispanics' responses to a health survey in which no back-translation was undertaken reveal both lower reliabilities and lower bivariate correlations among Hispanics interviewed in Spanish than among Hispanics interviewed in English. An independent back-translation aimed at creating an English version of the questionnaire that was linguistically equivalent to the Spanish version indicated several instances in which the Spanish version was unidiomatic. Differences between the Spanish and English version in the idiomatic quality of the interview items, while not affecting meaning, appear to have affected the seriousness with which the interview situation was perceived. These perceptions, in turn, appear to have led to the response discrepancies observed.

Suggested Citation

  • Berkanovic, E., 1980. "The effect of inadequate language translation on Hispanics' responses to health surveys," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 70(12), pages 1273-1276.
    • Handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.70.12.1273_9
    DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.70.12.1273
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2105/AJPH.70.12.1273
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2105/AJPH.70.12.1273?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Emad ABU-SHANAB & Khalil Md NOR, 2013. "The Influence Of Language On Research Results," Management Research and Practice, Research Centre in Public Administration and Public Services, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 5(4), pages 37-48, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.70.12.1273_9. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.apha.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.