The Supports Intensity Scale will soon be available in French!

The American Association on Intellectual and Developmental disabilities (AAIDD) is poised to publish a French translation of the Supports Intensity Scale (SIS). While it is anticipated that the initial need for the French language SIS will be in Canada, this version of SIS can be adapted to French-speaking countries worldwide.

“There is no comparable tool to SIS in Québec. Therefore, people are very interested in exploring the potential of this instrument,” says psychologist Dr. Melanie Lamoureux-Hébert. Dr. Lamoureux-Hébert along with Dr. Diane Morin, professor of psychology at the University of Québec at Montréal, led the French SIS translation initiative. “People are excited about SIS because it opens up new opportunities in the clinical as well as research worlds. It helps us better identify individual needs so that specific services can be defined based upon the needs of each person,” explains Dr. Lamoureux-Hébert.

Translating a tool involves more than finding the right words. It has to be culturally adapted to the context in which it is likely to be used. Morin and Lamoureux-Hébert followed a rigorous process that ensured not only the grammatical accuracy of the Supports Intensity Scale, but also its cultural appropriateness. A committee of six members including Lamoureux-Hébert and other French-speaking psychologists each individually translated the Supports Intensity Scale into French. The committee met thereafter to establish a consensus on one preliminary translation of SIS. A second committee of psychologists compared this translation to the original version of the English SIS and evaluated it for its grammatical accuracy and cultural appropriateness. Both committees then agreed on one final version of the translation. The French SIS was then given to professionals in the field—clinicians, psychologists, social workers—who evaluated the clarity of the instrument based on a Likert scale. Results from this pilot were presented to the initial Committee and final adjustments were made to the instrument. Voilà, the French SIS was born!

The validity of the French-language SIS was tested on a group of 245 persons with varying degrees of intellectual disability. The respondents were selected randomly by nine different agencies in the region of Montréal who agreed to participate in this pilot project. The interviews were conducted by 7 doctoral students who were trained in the administration of SIS and who had previous experience working with persons with intellectual disability.

Like its English counterpart, the French SIS will be sold with a User’s Manual, the translation of which was overseen by Dr. Morin. The French SIS will be available in Fall 2007 and will be distributed through AAIDD. For more details, stay tuned for details at http://bookstore.aaidd.org.

The Supports Intensity Scale has been translated into Spanish, Dutch, Icelandic, and Complex Chinese. For questions on a foreign language version of SIS or for queries on translating AAIDD publications into a foreign language, send an email to books@aaidd.org.