Cross-cultural validation of the self-assessment of competence in communication - SACCom - to Italian.
Aurora d'Apolito, Vanessa Veis Ribeiro, Glaucya Madazio and 1 others
PMID 42561349WHAT IT FOUND
A 19-item self-assessment of communication competence has been validated into Italian (TACCom-IT).
SLH pathologists can now use it to assess and track communication skills in Italian-speaking clients. The authors note it still needs further testing in this population.
Key findings
01The SACCom is a 19-item self-assessment of communication competence, with nine aspects directed at speaking and ten at listening.
02101 Italian professionals who use their voice in their profession completed the pre-test of the Italian version; the vast majority answered using the usual yes/no key rather than the added 'not applicable' option (p < 0.001 for all analysable items).
03No items needed to be removed or modified after the pre-test, and the final Italian version (TACCom-IT) maintained the original structure of the instrument.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The authors state that the other psychometric properties (validity, reliability, responsiveness) of TACCom-IT in the Italian population still need to be demonstrated in future studies, so the instrument is not yet fully validated for clinical scoring in Italian. The sociodemographic description of the sample was limited to age, sex, and profession; no information on education level, region, or specific voice-related diagnoses was collected. Participants were recruited by convenience through a social-media invitation, and four of the eight SLH pathologists involved in the translation and review stages were also authors of the paper. The pre-test sample (101) was drawn from a single country and a single language group, so generalisability to other Italian-speaking populations or to non-professional voice users is unknown.
Declared interests
The authors declared no financial support and no conflicts of interest. The original SACCom was developed by Mara Behlau, and the authors of the current study obtained her authorisation to carry out the cross-cultural validation.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read 'cross-culturally validated' as 'ready for clinical scoring.' The authors themselves state that validity, reliability, and responsiveness of TACCom-IT in the Italian population still need to be demonstrated in future studies. What this paper establishes is that the Italian translation is semantically and culturally equivalent to the Brazilian Portuguese original; it does not yet show that the scores are stable, meaningful, or responsive to change in Italian speakers.