Abstract

Background and Aim: Evaluation research provides new perspectives for clinical supervision (CS), and international collaboration offers advantages to develop valid instruments for this purpose. Developing an instrument for the evaluation of CS is a timely and important issue in Iran today. The aim of this study was to examine the translation and the validation process of the Manchester Clinical Supervision Scale (MCSS) in Iran. Material and Methods: This study was performed at the ILAM Hospitals, IR, during the year 2008. The approach was to develop quantitative and qualitative methods. The study focused on the translation and the validation process of the Manchester Clinical Supervision Scale for testing in Iran. The instrument was a 36-item questionnaire with a Likert-type (1-5) scale, comprising of seven sub-scales: trust and rapport, supervisor advice and support, improved care and skills, importance and value of CS, finding time, personal issues and reflection and total score. At first, a licensed translator translated the instrument into the Iranian language. A native British language teacher performed the blind back-translation into English. The content validity and content equivalence of the instrument were tested after the translation process by five experts in clinical supervision (face validity). The experts were asked to rate the clarity and importance of each item using a 4-point rating scale (e.g. 1=not clear, 4=very clear). A pilot sample (n = 120) was collected to test the translated instrument. Result: Of the instrument's 36 items, the experts rated 34 as clear and 2 unacceptable. As for importance, 32 items were rated as good, and four as unacceptable. In the pilot sample test, the Cronbach's alpha value for the total score was 0.9547 and in the sub-scales it was 0.7193-0.9218. The mean values in the subscales were 12.18-27.45 and SD was 2.34-3.55. The British test sample had almost similar values. Discussion and Conclusion: The work presented here showed that the Iranian translation of the MCSS was culturally acceptable, relevant, sensitive to fluctuation and was consistent with the original MCSS. The statistical tests showed moderately high reliability between the translated and the original instrument. Translating an instrument into another language not only requires expertise in language, but also in practice. The cultural validation is the most important phase in the process that can be accomplished with pilot testing and statistical methods. However, further expert evaluation is required for the validity of the instrument.