Validity of the Spanish Language Version of the HERO Wellness Scale: Report From Mental Health Professionals and General Community

OBJECTIVE: A substantial segment of the clinical population is Spanish speaking and to serve their needs, this study is to test the validity of the English to Spanish translation of this wellness scale (HERO Wellness Scale).

METHOD: 10 adult fluent Spanish and English bi-lingual mental health professionals and 10 non-mental health Spanish and English fluent bi-lingual speakers from the general community were recruited for this study. They were offered both the English and Spanish version of the scales and asked specific questions to rate the reliability and validity of the accuracy of the translation.

RESULTS: Each of the five items from the HERO Wellness Scale was queried separately (N-20). The mental health group of ten was separately analyzed from the ten community respondents (non-mental health professionals), to ensure that both groups found the translation to be accurate. Every single item scored high - between 7 - 9 on a 0-10 Likert of accuracy (0 = no accuracy, and 10 = complete accuracy), with small standard deviations, and high median and mode values.

CONCLUSION: The Spanish version of the HERO Wellness Scale is deemed by both mental health, and non-mental health community bi-lingual speakers to be a highly accurate translation of the English version. This has considerable importance as offering a wellness measure to the Spanish speaking population is an urgent clinical need. The Spanish version of HERO Wellness Scale can be immediately used to measure wellness in clinical settings across the USA and in Latin America.