Patient-Reported Outcome (PRO) Consortium translation process: consensus development of updated best practices.

This paper describes the rationale and goals of the Patient-Reported Outcome (PRO) Consortium's instrument translation process. The PRO Consortium has developed a number of novel PRO measures which are in the process of qualification by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in clinical trials where endpoints based on these measures would support product labeling claims. Given the importance of FDA qualification of these measures, the PRO Consortium's Process Subcommittee determined that a detailed linguistic validation (LV) process was necessary to ensure that all translations of Consortium-developed PRO measures are performed using a standardized approach with the rigor required to meet regulatory and pharmaceutical industry expectations, as well as having a clearly defined instrument translation process that the translation industry can support. The consensus process involved gathering information about current best practices from 13 translation companies with expertise in LV, consolidating the findings to generate a proposed process, and obtaining iterative feedback from the translation companies and PRO Consortium member firms on the proposed process in two rounds of review in order to update existing principles of good practice in LV and to provide sufficient detail for the translation process to ensure consistency across PRO Consortium measures, sponsors, and translation companies. The consensus development resulted in a 12-step process that outlines universal and country-specific new translation approaches, as well as country-specific adaptations of existing translations. The PRO Consortium translation process will play an important role in maintaining the validity of the data generated through these measures by ensuring that they are translated by qualified linguists following a standardized and rigorous process that reflects best practice.
Competing Interests: SE has over 20 years of experience in translation, cultural adaptation, and linguistic validation of PRO measures and served as co-chair of the International Society for Quality of Life (ISOQOL) Translation and Cultural Adaptation Special Interest Group from 2013 to 2017. She has also co-authored several publications on translation and linguistic validation methodology.Not applicable as this manuscript does not report or involve the use of any animal or human data or tissue.Not applicableSE is an employee of the Critical Path Institute and has no competing interests. SP is an employee and shareholder of Pfizer and has no competing interests. SM is an employee of the Critical Path Institute and has no competing interests. PB was an employee and shareholder of GlaxoSmithKline at the time the work described in the manuscript was conducted. She is currently an employee and shareholder of Janssen and has no competing interests.Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.