Purpose: to translate into Brazilian Portuguese and culturally adapt the Short Personal Experiences Questionnaire (SPEQ) to climacteric women.
Methods: the original English version from the University of Melbourne, Australia, was initially translated into Portuguese and back-translated into English. A sociocultural adaptation of vocabulary and linguistic constructions was performed to facilitate comprehension. The questionnaire was then pretested in successive stages in 50 women, until no doubts remained. The final version of the adapted instrument was self-responded by 378 Brazilian-born women, between 40 to 65 years old, with 11 years or more of schooling in a population-based study. The reliability (internal consistency as measured by Cronbach's alpha), the construct validity (correlation coefficients between the items comprising the SPEQ and selected variables) and the criterion validity (correlation coefficient between sexual dysfunction score and overall score of sexual life classification) were analyzed.
Results: one hundred and eight women answered all the questions of the SPEQ and were included in the study. Internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) for all the nine SPEQ items ranged from 0.55 to 0.77 and the general alpha was 0.68. In the construct validity analysis, most of the correlation coefficients were significant (p<0.005). The criterion validity analysis showed significant correlation coefficients in most cases.
Conclusions: following the adaptation process, the Portuguese version of the SPEQ was deemed useful and appropriate for collecting data on sexual function and dyspareunia in Brazilian women, aged 45 to 65 years, with at least 11 years of schooling.