Validation of an Argentinean version of the California Psychological Inventory

JEANRIE, CH., MIKULIC, I. M., CRESPI, M., CASSULO, G.

Ghent, Belgium

Congreso; 10th European Conference on Psychological Assessment; 2009

European Association of Psychological Assessment (EAPA)

Translating or adapting a psychometric test poses considerable challenges. The International Test Commission’ Guidelines on test adaptation stress quite clearly many of the issues that are faced in such a process (ITC, 2001). While the test chosen for adaptation must be compatible with such an endeavour, rigour of the translation method, proper attention to local linguistic and cultural idiosyncrasies remain essential conditions to validity (Geisinger, 1994, van De Vijver & Poortinga, 2005). Argentina enjoys a high level of development (United Nations development Index, 2008) and reaches a level of quality of life similar to that of Canada and Belgium (Quality of life index, 2008). Nonetheless, its history, economy and politics suffice to distinguish this country, in many regards, from others of Northern and Latin America.  In such a context, the process of adapting the California Psychological inventory (Gough, 1996), a personality inventory known for its psychometric qualities and its cross-cultural validity required that ample consideration was given to Argentina’s cultural and linguistic particularities. According to the conceptual translation method (Jeanrie & Bertrand, 2001; Jeanrie & van De Vijver, 2005), the CPI was first translated into Spanish by four bilingual psychologists. Each item version was later scored for conceptual and linguistic equivalences by five assessors. The resulting version was pretested on a sample of 300. Results from this pretest and data from 10 assessors of the functional equivalence of every item lead to a first Argentinean CPI version. Validation and equivalence analyses of this version were assessed based on a new sample of more than 600 participants. This presentation will summarize the adaptation process and method and discuss the psychometric qualities of the Argentinean version of the California Psycholical Inventory.