Validation of the Portuguese score version is an important breakthrough for the EFAS Score

EFAS Score Committee : Validation of the Portuguese score

The Score Committee of the European Foot and Ankle Society (EFAS) developed, validated, and published the EFAS Score in ten languages (English, German, French, Italian, Polish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish, Turkish, Persian). The most widely spoken mother tongues in Europe are German (20 %), English (15 %), Italian (15 %), French (14 %), Spanish (9 %), Polish (9 %), Romanian (6 %), Dutch (5 %), Hungarian (3 %) and Portuguese, Greek, Swedish, Czech and Bulgarian (2 % each).

Beyond Europe, Spanish (480 million), English (379 million) and Portuguese (221 million) are among the six most common mother tongues. From the very beginning of this project, the data acquisition times differed markedly between countries, and the COVID crisis further delayed the data acquisition in some countries. There are no more or less important languages. However, the number of mother tongue speakers differ, and the validation of the Spanish score version with 39 million mother tongue speakers in Europe will inevitably result in more score users than, for example, the Estonian score version with 1.1 million mother tongue speakers. When examining the worldwide distribution of mother tongue speakers, this difference increases (Spanish, 480 million; Estonian, 1.1 million).

In this context, the validation of Spanish and Portuguese versions was given high priority from the inception. Complete data from Portuguese language were available, and the EFAS Score Committee decided to publish this without delay without waiting for completed data from other languages. Following the results of the present study, it can be concluded that the EFAS Score was successfully cross culturally validated in Portuguese. As 221 million people speak Portuguese as mother tongue worldwide, the validation of the Portuguese score version is an important break- through for the EFAS Score. The eleven currently validated EFAS Score versions allow for validated assessment of almost 1 billion people worldwide in mother tongue.

All score versions are freely available at www.efas.net. The following languages are currently under validation: Spanish, Norwegian, Danish, Hungarian, Estonian, Arabic. For validation re- quests of other languages please contact the EFAS Score Committee.

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