Versão Brasileira do The Nordic Orofacial Test – Screening (NOT-S) para Avaliação de Disfunções Orofaciais

Objective: To translate the instrument The Nordic Orofacial Test - Screening (NOT-S), which evaluates orofacial dysfunctions, into Brazilian Portuguese and to perform the cross-cultural adaptation for Brazilian children. Method: The instrument was subjected to the following stages: translation into Brazilian Portuguese, back-translation, revision by a committee (composed by three Professors of Dentistry and a formally instructed patient) and pretest. For the phase of cultural equivalency (pretest), a "did not understand" or "does not apply" item was added to each one of the items of the instrument; if the rate of these answers was 15% or above, the question should be reformulated by the committee and reapplied to another group of children. The NOT-S was applied to a sample of randomly selected 20 children aged 8 to 14 years from public schools of the city of Piracicaba, SP, Brazil. Results: There was a strong agreement between the original instrument and its back translated version. The changes made by the revising committee were the addition of words and sentences and the substitution of adverbials and words by synonyms to facilitate the understanding. In the pretest, two questions had 15% of "did not understand" answers and were reformulated; thereafter, the rate of "did not understand" answers was null. Conclusion: The final Portuguese version of NOT-S was rigorously translated and adapted to the Brazilian culture, and was easily understood by the sample of Brazilian children evaluated