Translation and cross-cultural adaptation of the Pregnancy Physical Activity Questionnaire (PPAQ) into Spanish

Abstract

Aim: The objective of this study was to translate and transculturally adapt into Spanish the Pregnancy Physical Activity Questionnaire. Methods: The translation procedure included a forward step (translation and synthesis) and a quantitative and qualitative control of the usefulness of the Pregnancy Physical Activity Questionnaire. Afterwards, a prefinal version of the Spanish adapted questionnaire was pretested on 58 pregnant women from Granada (south of Spain). The content, semantic, technical, conceptual, and experiential equivalents of cultural adaptation were discussed by the research members at each step. Results: After the pre-test, two items of the original Pregnancy Physical Activity Questionnaire were replaced by new items that the team considered more culturally appropriate for Spanish pregnant women. Also, some rewording into the European metric system. The response time ranged from 5 to 15 minutes. These changes were well understood and worked properly in the final version. A final version of the Pregnancy Physical Activity Questionnaire was agreed on after a discussion among the research members about the results obtained in the prefinal version. Conclusion: The final Spanish version of the Pregnancy Physical Activity Questionnaire has showed cross-cultural equivalence with the original English version.

Keywords: Physical activity assessment; pregnancy; prenatal care; sedentary time.