Argentine version of the PediEAT, a pediatric eating assessment tool

Abstract

Introduction.During childhood, children may experience some degree of difficulty eating. A tool (PediEAT) has been developed in the United States and is available to assess pediatric eating and to identify problematic symptoms.Objective. To obtain an Argentine version that is transculturally adapted, culturally adequate, and semantically equivalent to the original version. Population and methods.A self-administered version of the PediEAT was used and completed by families and/or caregivers of children aged 6 months to 7 years. In the first phase, content validity was assessed by a group of experts. This was followed by a pre-test phase with families using cognitive interviews to test word and phrase comprehension. The necessary changes were made to obtain a version adapted to the context. Results. The tool's content validity was assessed by a group of 8 experts; as a result, 36 of the 80 items were changed. During the pre-test phase, cognitive interviews were conducted with 18 caregivers; 11 items were changed to improve comprehension by the Argentine population. The Argentine version was approved by the original authors. Conclusions.The Argentine version of the PediEAT tool is linguistically equivalent to the original version, and this allows its use to screen for feeding problems in children.