A French adaptation of the Overt Behaviour Scale (OBS) measuring challenging behaviours following acquired brain injury: The Échelle des comportements observables (ÉCO)

Abstract

Purpose: To develop a French version of the Overt Behaviour Scale (OBS) and examine some of its psychometric properties.

Methods: The scale was adapted and validated according to standard guidelines for cross-cultural adaptation of questionnaires (Échelle des comportements observables; ÉCO). The reliability and construct validity of the ÉCO were studied among 29 inpatients and outpatients who sustained an acquired brain injury. The instruments were administered by 12 clinicians located at eight rehabilitation centres and the local brain injury association.

Results: The ÉCO provided behaviour profile descriptives much like the original scale. It showed excellent reliability and good convergent and divergent validity, as reflected by significant associations with other measures that contained similar behavioural items and by the absence of signification correlations with broader constructs such as physical and cognitive abilities.

Conclusion: This study provides evidence that the ÉCO behaves much like the original OBS, has promising initial findings with respect to reliability and validity and is a valuable research and clinical instrument to assess the severity and typology of challenging behaviour after an acquired brain injury and to monitor the evolution of behaviours after intervention in French and bilingual communities.

Keywords:

• Challenging behaviour
• behavioural disturbance
• acquired brain injury
• assessment instrument
• French adaptation

Acknowledgements

We wish to express our appreciation to the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Rehabilitation of Greater Montreal for its support during the research and all the clinicians who collaborated in the data collection. The authors would like to thank Maysaa Daher for her assistance with data collation.

Declaration of interest

This study was supported by a research grant to DG and JG from the Réseau provincial de recherche en adaptation–réadaptation (REPAR). The authors report no conflicts of interest. The findings reported in this manuscript have not been previously published and the manuscript is not being simultaneously submitted elsewhere. Original research procedures were consistent with the principles of research ethics, published by the American Psychological Association.