Culture in the spotlight—cultural adaptation and content validity of the integrated palliative care outcome scale for dementia: A cognitive interview study

Background: Dementia is a life-limiting disease with high symptom burden. The Integrated Palliative Care Outcome Scale for Dementia (IPOS-Dem) is the first comprehensive person-centered measure to identify and measure palliative care needs of people with dementia. However, such a measure is missing in the German health care system. Aim: To develop a culturally adapted German version of the IPOS-Dem and determine its content validity as a foundation for comprehensive psychometric testing. Design: Cognitive interview study with intermittent analysis and questionnaire adaptation. Interview guide and coding frame followed thematic analysis according to Willis complemented by Tourangeau’s model of cognitive aspects of survey methodology: comprehension, retrieval, judgment, response. Participants: Purposive sample with professionals (n = 29) and family carers (n = 6) of people with advanced dementia in seven nursing homes and person’s own home care in four interview rounds (n = 11; 10; 7; 7). Results: IPOS-Dem was regarded as comprehensive and accessible. Cultural adaption pertained to issues of comprehension and judgment. Comprehension challenges referred to the person-centered concept of “being affected by” used in the POS-measures. Judgment problems related to persons with limited communication causing challenges in assessment. Conclusion: Most issues of cultural adaptation could be addressed by questionnaire modifications. However, interviews unveiled fundamental challenges for using proxy reported person-centered assessments. Continuous training on how to use the instrument is imperative to integrate the person-centered approach of palliative care into nursing homes as a key provider of generalist palliative care for people with dementia. The refined version is ready for psychometric testing.