Introduction: The menopause rating scale (MRS) has been proven to be a reliable tool for quantifying the impact of menopausal symptoms and aiding clinicians in prescribing appropriate treatments worldwide. However, the Vietnamese-MRS (VN-MRS) has not been developed. This research aimed to evaluate the reliability and validity of the VN-MRS, and identify factors that are associated with menopausal symptoms in women aged 50 to 59.

Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted on a sample of 200 women aged 50 - 59 years in Vietnam from February 2020 to June 2020. The MRS was translated into Vietnamese following the procedure from the Berlin Center for Epidemiology and Health Research and adjusted to fit the local culture. Reliability was assessed by using Cronbach’s alpha coefficients and repeatability (using Intra-class Correlation Coefficient (ICC) at 2-week intervals). Validity was assessed by concurrent validity and construct validity.

Results: Cronbach's alpha for the total score was 0.89. Repeatability (test-retest) was valued as “very good” (ICC = 0.991). The fit indices for construct validity, after adjustment, were: χ2 (39) = 67.78 with p = 0.003; SRMR = 0.042; TLI = 0.971; CFI = 0.979; RMSEA = 0.061 90% confidence interval (CI) (0.035 – 0.084). Concurrent validity demonstrated an inverse correlation with the SF-36 survey (r = - 0.87; p<0.001). Age, education, and menopausal period were contributed to the menopausal score.

Conclusions: The VN-MRS has good reliability and validity, making it suitable for assessing the severity of menopausal symptoms in middle-aged Vietnamese women.

Introduction: To date no study has investigated speech-related social anxiety for Vietnamese adults who stutter. To carry out such a study, a culturally and linguistically relevant assessment tool is required but is not yet available. The objectives of this study were to translate and adapt the UTBAS-6 scale into Vietnamese and evaluate the validity and reliability of the Vietnamese version of the scale for use with Vietnamese adults who stutter.

Methods: The translation process included forward and backward translation, synthesis, and expert review. The final version was administered to 34 Vietnamese adults who stutter. Content validity was assessed by experts working in the field of speech and language therapy. Face validity was assessed by study participants. Convergent and divergent validities were used to determine the construct validity. Cronbach’s alpha was used to test the internal consistency and intraclass correlation coefficient to determine test-retest reliability.

Results: S-CVIs of “Relevance” and “Clarity” of the scale were in the range of 0.83-1.00, showing a high consensus of the expert panel. All participants stated that the Vietnamese version was related to stuttering and was easy to understand. The convergent validity was at 88.9% of the items, and the divergent validity was at 61.1% of the items. Alpha coefficients of three subscales and total scale were greater than 0.7. The test-retest reliability of the scales was moderate.

Conclusions: The results of the study provided preliminary information on the validity and reliability of the Vietnamese version of the UTBAS-6 scale. Further studies with a representative and larger sample size are needed to ensure the accuracy of the findings.

Background: This study translated and culturally adapted the Comfort Behavior Scale (Comfort-B) into Vietnamese using a standard protocol guided by the World Health Organization.

Methods: The Comfort-B was translated into Vietnamese and then English back-translated by independent translators. These versions were reviewed and assessed by a Vietnamese expert’s panel and an English expert’s panel. Thirty-four nurses of the Nhi Dong 1 Hospital were invited to use the Vietnamese Comfort-B to assess pain while watching five videos recorded before, during and after wound dressing replacement. The eight characteristics of the Vietnamese Comfort-B were assessed by 34 nurses. Fifteen nurses agreed to do the second assessment two weeks from the first assessment. The content validity index was used to assess the relevance and clarity of all items and the whole scale. Agreements between raters were explored using Kappa statistics. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) were used to assess intra-rater and inter-rater reliability. Multi-level linear regression was used to assess changes in the Vietnamese Comfort-B before, during and after wound dressing replacement between two assessments.

Results: The Vietnamese Comfort-B was accredited by the Vietnamese expert’s panel. The English-back translated version was approved by the English expert’s panel. The nurses agreed that the Vietnamese Comfort-B can be used in clinical practice and research. Kappas of all items were ≥0.96 indicating excellent agreement between raters. Alpha coefficients of two assessments were ≥0.97 indicating excellent internal consistency. All ICCs ≥ 0.79 indicated good intra-rater and inter-rater reliability.

Conclusions: The study suggested that the Vietnamese Comfort-B can be used for future studies assessing children’s pain in the local hospital context.

Background: The study aimed to culturally adapt and validate Neonatal Infant Pain Scale (NIPS) for use in Vietnamese settings.

Methods: The original NIPS was translated into Vietnamese using a standard protocol. Registered nurses of Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), Tien Giang General Hospital, Vietnam used the Vietnamese NIPS for assessing neonatal pain and then provided feedback on acceptability of the scale. Five registered nurses of NICU were randomly selected and used NIPS for assessing neonatal pain while watching thirty videos at two times, two weeks apart from each other. Pulse rates per minute and oxygen saturation (SpO₂) were also recorded for validity evaluation. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) with two-way random effects were applied to assess intra-rater and inter-rater reliability. Multilevel linear regression was applied to assess the association between NIPS score with pulse rates and SpO₂ adjusting for raters, three periods and two assessments.

Results: The Vietnamese NIPS was accepted and valued by nurses at the NICU. ICCs between the first and second assessments were from 0.53 to 1.00 for five raters before, during and after clinical procedures showing moderate to excellent intra-rater reliability. ICCs among five raters were moderate to good before and after, but poor (ICC<0.4) during clinical procedures. NIPS score was not associated with SpO₂, but with pulse rates per minute.

Conclusions: The preliminary results showed that the Vietnamese version of NIPS is reliable and should be used. However, it is recommended that further research should be conducted to confirm its reliability and validity.

Background: The Diabetes Distress Scale (DDS) is a valid instrument to measure diabetes distress included in American Diabetes Association and Canadian Diabetes Association guidelines but not available in Vietnamese. This study translated and culturally adapted the DDS to assess diabetes distress of Vietnamese type 2 diabetics and evaluated its internal consistency, face and content validity.

Methods: The translation process followed standard guidelines for adaptation of an instrument: forward translation, back translation, synthesis, evaluation by an expert panel and pretest. The expert panel included three English specialists as linguistic experts and six content experts in multidisciplinary areas relevant to the study. The pretest was conducted on a sample of 31 type 2 diabetics in the Endocrinology outpatient clinic at Trung Vuong hospital. Content validity was determined based on experts’ concurrence using content validity index for items (I-CVI). Face validity is assessed by participants in pretest. Internal consistency was measured using Cronbach’s alpha.

Results: Final version was equivalent with the original English version and easy to understand. I-CVI of 17 items were 1.00 in linguistic experts and greater than 0.83 in content experts. All 31 participants involved in the pretest commented that the items were very clear and acceptable regarding their socioeconomic background. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.76 – 0.93 for each subscale and 0.94 for the overall.

Conclusion: Vietnamese version of the DDS was reliable, face and content-valid to assess diabetes distress in type 2 diabetics among Vietnamese.

A POSCE was developed and administered in 2015 to assess six professional attributes for the Family Medicine (FM) residents, University of Medicine and Pharmacy (UMP), Vietnam. This study aims at exploring inter-rater reliability in FM POSCE developed in this context when analytic rubrics were applied.

Background: Past POSCEs showed raters’ variability on applying the global marking items and holistic rating. Using analytic rubrics, unlike holistic type, will provide more rationale for assigning a certain score might influence raters’ variability. Nonetheless, it is little known to what extent switching to this rubric type might influence the inter-rater reliability of POSCE.  

Methods:  Before the FM professionalism module (pretest) and after this module (posttest), 36 and 42 FM residents took the POSCE respectively. The raters in the pretest included 12 teachers of FM training center. Four faculty members from different faculties were belatedly added to the post-test together with the 12 former raters.  Raters’ training occurred in two different times, the former took place only for the 12 FM raters before the pretest and the latter was before the posttest for the 4 belatedly-recruited. During the POSCE, one pair of raters observed all performances per station. Inter-rater reliability was measured by the differences in total scores between raters per pair using paired t-test and Pearson correlation coefficient.  

Results: In POSCE pretest, no significant difference was found between raters’ scores in most pairs of raters, contrasting with that in the posttest. Most differences were noticed in the pairs of raters, in which one of the raters was the belatedly-recruited. In the pretest, moderate to strong positive correlation between raters’ mean scores were found (r=0.55-0.85), similar range was seen in the post-test (r=0.47-0.87), however, the correlation slightly weakened.   

Discussion and conclusion: The FM POSCE has high inter-rater reliability on the utilization of analytic grading rubrics. An analytic rubric might help minimize the discrepancies among raters. Moreover, training raters might have been an alternative influential factor on the raters’ consensus.