Spanish Cross-Cultural Adaptation of the Wisconsin Gait Scale

Introduction: the Wisconsin Gait Scale (WGS) has been shown to be a valid and quick tool for analyzing gait in post-stroke people in the clinical setting. Its widespread use has led to versions of the scale in other languages, but so far there has been no version in Spanish.

Objective: to conduct a cross-cultural adaptation of the WGS for use in the Spanish-speaking population and to analyze the content validity.

Materials and methods: the Spanish version was obtained using the double translation method and back translation method, followed by a review by an expert committee. This expert committee evaluated the content validity index (CVI) for each item on the version obtained and for the entire scale (scale content validity index (S-CVI)). The item content validity index (I-CIV) was calculated as the number of experts whose score had been 3 or 4 divided by the total number of experts. To obtain the S-CVI, the middle of the I-CVI was calculated for all the items on the scale.

Results: the Spanish version of the WGS was obtained after the expert committee evaluation. The CVI was excellent for its general assessment (0.91), excellent for 85.7% of its items (≥0.78), and good for 14.3% of the CVI (≥0.72).

Conclusions: the Spanish version of the WGS was developed through a process of cross-cultural adaptation from its original English version, and, according to an expert committee, it had an excellent content validity.