Background: Fatigue is a symptom associated with the weakening or depletion of an
individual's physical and/or mental resources. The term fatigability comprises the subjective
perception of fatigue in face of activities of specific intensity and duration. The Pittsburg
Fatigability Scale (PFS), originally published in English, is the only validated scale to
measure perceived fatigability in older adults. Considering the importance of specific
assessment in the aging population for the prevention of conditions and for the rehabilitation,
it is necessary to translate and adapt it cross-culturally to the specificities of the Brazilian
context. Objective: To translate and cross-culturally adapt the Pittsburgh Fatigability Scale
into Brazilian Portuguese to assess fatigability in the Brazilian older adults population.
Methodology: We carried out the translation and cross-cultural adaptation to generate the
PFS version in Brazilian Portuguese (PFS-Brasil), following the steps: translation from the source language (English), comparison and synthesis of translated versions, blind back-translation, comparison of back-translations and assessment of instrument clarity by the expert committee. People aged 60 years and overwho met the inclusion and exclusion criteria were invited to participate voluntarily in the study after approval by the Research Ethics Committee of the Institute of Health Sciences of the Federal University of Pará (nº 56210622.0.0000.0018) and signature of the TCLE. Each participant provided demographic data, responded to the PFS-Brasil and reported their understanding, difficulty in responding and suggestions about each item on the scale. All assessments were performed in environments with noise, temperature and lighting control to ensure privacy and comfort conditions for the proper performance of the tests. The R software was used to analyze the evidence of construct validity and instrument precision based on Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), Cronbach's (α), McDonald's (ω) and composite reliability. Results: The Brazilian version of the PFS (PFS-Brasil) was developed. The pilot test referring to the last phase of the cross-cultural adaptation was carried out with 103 participants, predominantly female (81.5%), married (41.7%), brown (60.1%), who did not have COVID-19 (50.4%) and who perform some type of physical activity (64%). Confirmatory factor analyzes carried out point to the adequacy of bifactorial models for both subscales (x²: 48.53 for the physical subscale and x²: 35.05 for the mental subscale), with excellent and satisfactory internal consistency in factors 1 (⍺: 0, 9) and 2 (⍺: 0.76) of the Mental Fatigue subscale, respectively. As for the Physical Fatigue subscale, it presented very good results for factor 1 (⍺: 0.8) and satisfactory for factor 2 (⍺: 0.6). Conclusion: The present study demonstrated that the Brazilian version of the Pittsburgh Fatigability Scale has adequate construct validity for assessing perceived fatigability in older adults, both in its physical and mental subscales.
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