Cross-cultural adaptation, translation, and psychometric evaluation of the simplified Chinese version of the Team Emergency Assessment Measure (TEAM)

The Team Emergency Assessment Measure (TEAM) questionnaire is a validated tool for evaluating non-technical skills in emergency team performance, such as trauma or resuscitation teams. Despite its translation into multiple languages, a Simplified Chinese version has not been validated. This study aimed to translate and culturally adapt the TEAM questionnaire into a Simplified Chinese version (SC-TEAM), ensuring conceptual equivalence and cultural relevance with the original version. The adaptation process was aligned with established cross-cultural translation guidelines, including forward translation, synthesis, back-translation, expert consultation, and pre-testing. Cultural relevance was ensured through Delphi rounds and cognitive interviews with domain experts. The translation team collaborated with the original authors to maintain conceptual equivalence. Two trained raters independently assessed video recordings of 46 emergency team scenarios involving severe trauma or resuscitation, producing 46 pairs of ratings (92 individual ratings). Content validity, internal consistency, item–total correlations, inter-rater reliability, and floor and ceiling effects were examined. The original scales were independently translated into Simplified Chinese, back-translated, and reviewed by a multidisciplinary team of authors, doctors, nurses, and English majors. Expert assessment supported the content validity of the 11 behavioural items (S-CVI/Ave = 0.98; S-CVI/UA = 0.82). Internal consistency was good (Cronbach’s α = 0.896), and item–total correlations ranged from 0.547 to 0.764. The average-measure ICC for the SC-TEAM total score (Items 1–11) was 0.902 (95% CI: 0.836–0.938); average-measure ICCs for individual items ranged from 0.553 to 0.849. No item showed a floor effect, while six items showed ceiling effects ranging from 15.22% to 26.09%. SC-TEAM showed preliminary evidence of content validity, internal consistency, and inter-rater reliability for assessing non-technical performance in the emergency team scenarios studied. It may support structured observation and feedback in emergency team training. Further research should examine its structural validity, responsiveness, and use across other clinical settings.