The Scale of Attitudes Towards People with Disabilities: An Arabic Cross-Cultural Translation Study

Abstract

Background: The Scale of Attitudes Toward Disabled Persons (SADP) has been widely used and translated into different languages to evaluate the public’s general attitude toward people with disabilities. Purpose: The aim of this study was to adapt the SADP to Arabic culture through the application of a systematic cross-cultural translation process and an analysis of the translated version's content validity, internal consistency, and test-retest reliability. Subjects and Methods: The Arabic version of SADP was created using the cross-cultural translation guidelines of the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons. The five stages of the guidelines were expert evaluation, pre-testing, synthesis, backward translation, and forward translation. Ten specialists with PhDs in rehabilitation evaluated the content validity of the Arabic version using the content validity index (CVI) and content validity ratio (CVR). To investigate internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and split-half reliability, 160 students were selected from various colleges and given the same scale after 14 days. A mere 137 students completed the testing phase, with 14% (24/160) dropping. Result: For every survey item, the CVI was excellent (>0.8). For every item, there was a significant difference (p<0.03) according to the Wilcoxon Signed 
Rank Test. This outcome is consistent with the CVR outcomes for every item. The scale's Cronbach's alpha (α =0.78), the split-half reliability's Spearman-Brown coefficient (α=0.81), and the test-retest reliability's intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) were 0.96. Conclusion: The Arabic version of the SADP exhibited good validity, good internal consistency, and excellent test-retest reliability.