Abstract

Introduction. Although the Haitian migrant population has a significant presence in Latin American countries, a few studies assess this population's mental health; one of the reasons is the lack of psychometric instruments in kreyol (Haitian Creole). Objective. Adapt the Spanish version of the Depression Scale of the Center for Epidemiological Studies (CESD-R-20) into kreyol. Methods. Based on a cross-sectional two stage cluster sampling with 207 Haitian migrants living in Santiago de Chile, we conducted translation and back translation of the CESD-R-20 Scale from Spanish to kreyol; additionally, we reached an adapted version in Spanish. Results. In total, 132 participants answered the survey in Kreyol and 75 in Spanish. Dimensionality detection techniques recommend retaining a single component and three factors, with few exceptions across samples. Exploration of factor solutions leads to the retention of a single factor, which has an adequate Cronbach's alpha=0.92 (IC: 0.90;0.94). These results indicate that only one factor is needed. Discussion and conclusion. The adaptation of the Spanish CESD-R-20 instrument to Kreyol has obtained favorable validity evidence and can be used to initiate new studies on the Haitian migrant population on their journey through Latin America, although the validation process needs to be further extended.