1 Faculdade de Saúde Pública -FSP, da Universidade de São Paulo-USP. 2 University of California, San Francisco - USA. 3 University College London London, Greater London, UK.
Introduction: Nutritional screening is widely used method to identify individuals at nutritional risk. There is scientific evidence showing that the effects caused by malnutrition, can be minimized when the disease is diagnosed early, preventing the development of complications and death, especially in the older adults. Objective: This study aimed to describe the cross-cultural adaptation of the “Nutrition Screening Initiative Questionnaire – (NSI)” in community-dwelling older people into Brazilian Portuguese. Methods: The process of cross-cultural adaptation involved four stages: (1) translation, (2) back-translation, (3) technical review and semantic evaluation, (4) pre-test evaluation of verbal comprehension by experts in nutrition, malnutrition and cachexia.The questionnaire consists of ten questions to which points are assigned to affirmative responses, whose corresponds to the sum score that classifies and guides individuals, according to malnutrition. The NSI corresponds to different conditions that can affect the nutrition of the older people, including food intake and alcohol, chronic disease, oral conditions, medications and physical and / or mental limitations. Results: Language adaptations were made to render the questionnaire suitable for the Brazilian reality. Some adjustments were made of words, phrases and verb conjugation. The 10 questions were translated and adapted for Brazilian Portuguese. The final version contained the same 10 items presented in a clear format, easily understandable and accessible for be used by health professionals. Both the experts and older people assessed all the items as easy to understand. Conclusion: The NSI was translated and adapted with satisfactory results, thus confirming its initial psychometric qualities. The questionnaire requires further analysis of internal and external validity, and reproducibility.