Evaluating guidelines for test adaptations: A methodological analysis of translation quality

Guidelines for translating educational and psychological assessments for use across different languages and cultures have been developed by the International Test Commission and the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. Common themes in these guidelines and standards are when translating items both judgmental and statistical techniques should be used to ensure item comparability across languages, and rigorous quality-control steps should be included in the translation process. In this study, the authors use differential item functioning methodology to evaluate the comparability of translated items at two different points in time—after the initial translation and 4 years later after the translations were revisited using a more rigorous translation model. The results indicated that the revised translations led to improvements in some but not all items. Improvements in the process of translating survey items, even when based on accepted professional standards, should be statistically evaluated. This methodology illustrates how evaluations can be conducted on translated survey items.