Adaptation and validation of stroke-aphasia quality of life (SAQOL-39) scale to Hindi

Background: Stroke is a major detriment to the quality of life (QOL) in its victims. Several functional limitations following stroke contribute to the denigrated QOL in this population. Aphasia, a disturbance in the comprehension, processing, and/or expression of language, is a common consequence of stroke. Yet, in most Indian languages, including the national language (Hindi), there are no published tools to measure the QOL of persons with stroke-aphasia. Objective: The current study was carried out to adapt and validate a well-known tool to measure the QOL (i.e., Stroke-Aphasia Quality of Life-39; SAQOL-39) to Hindi. Materials and Methods: We presented the original (English) version of the SAQOL-39 to a group of six Hindi-speaking Speech Language Pathologists hailing from the central and northern regions of India to examine the sociocultural suitability of items and indicate modifications, if any. The linguistic adaptation was performed through a forward-backward translation scheme. The socioculturally and linguistically adapted (to Hindi) version was then administered on a group of 84 Hindi-speaking persons with aphasia to examine the acceptability, test-retest reliability as well as the internal consistency of the instrument. Results: The SAQOL-39 in Hindi exhibited high test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.9) as well as acceptability with minimal missing data. This instrument exhibited high internal consistency (Chronbach's ∝ = 0.98) as well as the both item-to-total and inter-domain correlations. Conclusions: The socioculturally and linguistically adapted Hindi version of SAQOL-39 is a robust tool to measure the QOL of persons with stroke-aphasia. It may serve as an essential tool to measure the QOL in this population for both clinical and research purposes.