RESUMO
CONTEXT AND OBJECTIVE: Impairments in social and emotional functioning may affect the communication skills and interpersonal relationships of people with dementia and their caregivers. This study had the aim of presenting the steps involved in the cross-cultural adaptation of the Social and Emotional Questionnaire (SEQ) for the Brazilian population. DESIGN AND SETTING: Cross-cultural adaptation study, conducted at the Center for Alzheimer's Disease and Related Disorders in a public university. METHODS: The process adopted in this study required six consecutive steps: initial translation, translation synthesis, back translation, committee of judges, pretesting of final version and submission to the original author. RESULTS: In general, the items had semantic, idiomatic, conceptual and experiential equivalence. During the first pretest, people with dementia and their caregivers had difficulties in understanding some items relating to social skills, which were interpreted ambiguously. New changes were made to allow better adjustment to the target population and, following this, a new pretest was performed. This pre-test showed that the changes were relevant and gave rise to the final version of the instrument. There was no correlation between education level and performance in the questionnaire, among people with dementia (P = 0.951). CONCLUSION: The Brazilian Portuguese version of the Social and Emotional Questionnaire was well understood and, despite the cultural and linguistic differences, the constructs of the original version were maintained.