The Ostomy Adjustment Inventory-23 (OAI-23) was developed in English to measure the social and psychological adaptation of individuals who underwent ostomy surgeries.
Purpose: The aim of the current study was to culturally adapt and test the measurement properties of a Brazilian Portuguese adapted version of the OAI-23.
Methods: The original version of the OAI-23 was composed of 23 questions distributed into the following 4 factors: acceptance, anxiety/preoccupation, social engagement, and anger. The OAI-23 was translated into Portuguese, reviewed by a committee of expert reviewers, pretested on a focus group, and back-translated. Using convenience sampling methods, patients who were treated at specialized health centers located in different parts of Brazil were invited to complete a demographic and health history questionnaire, the Janis and Field Self-Esteem Scale, and the adapted version of OAI-23 to assess its reliability, convergent construct validity, and discriminant construct validity.
Results: A total of 191 patients with a mean age of 58.9 years (SD = 14.7) (74.1% with colostomies, 19.6% with ileostomies, and 6.3% with urostomies) participated in the study. The Brazilian Portuguese adapted version of the OAI-23 had a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.846 and an intra-class correlation coefficient of 0.903 (P < .001). Significant correlations between OAI-23 scores and self-esteem scale scores confirmed the convergent construct validity, and the instrument was able to discriminate patients' adjustment according to age.
Conclusion: The adapted version of the OAI-23 proved to be reliable and valid for use in Brazil; this represents the first instrument capable of assessing psychosocial adaptation of patients with stomas in that country.