Abstract:

Objective: The purpose of the study was to conduct reliability and validity studies for the Turkish adaptation of the Parent Mealtime Action Scale developed by Hendy and colleagues 2009 . Method: The study was conducted methodologically. The Parent Mealtime Action Scale is a triple Likert-type scale composed of 31 items and nine sub-factors. The research was carried out with 1438 parents of students at four primary public schools in Maltepe, Istanbul during the 2010-2011 academic year. The data for the research was collected through a questionnaire and the Parent Mealtime Action Scale. The scale was first translated from English to Turkish and then was translated back from Turkish to English. The validity of the scale was evaluated using content validity, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and reliability was tested with the item-total score correlation, internal consistency and continuity methods. The Content Validity Index was used for content validity, Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient for internal consistency, Pearson’s correlation analysis for item analysis and test-retest reliability. Results: Of the parents recruited into the study, 50% were mothers and 50% were fathers. The mothers’ mean age was 36.36±5.10; the fathers’ mean age was 40.32 ±5.95. Education level of 24.2% of the mothers and 32.5% of the fathers was university or higher. The Content Validity Index of the scale was 97%. The exploratory factor analysis showed that there were nine sub-dimensions explaining 53.37% of total variance. In the confirmatory factor analysis, the fit indices of the scale were found in the acceptable range. Cronbach’s Alpha values for the subdimensions of the scale were found between 0.41-0.75. In the context of test-retest reliability, the value of Pearson’s correlation for the sub-dimensions was found between 0.91 and 0.99 p

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