Abstract
In the field of body dissatisfaction, the relative emphasis of traditional measurement tools’ on the weakness factor have been argued to be potentially problematic in studies focusing on negative body perceptions of men. To overcome this limitation, Tylka, Bergeron, and Schwartz (2005) developed the Male Body Attitudes Scale (MBAS). The scale evaluates the attitudes of men towards their bodies in terms of muscle, body fat ratio and height. The validity and the reliability of the scale were tested in various cultures and different factor structures were reported. Therefore, there is an ongoing need to test the psychometric properties of the scale in new studies with different cultures. For this purpose, this study examined the psychometric properties of the Turkish version of the MBAS with 277 male university students. The internal validity coefficient of the Turkish form was .88 for the whole scale, .86 for the Muscle dimension, .84 for the Body Fat Ratio dimension, and .77 for the Height dimension. Analyses of the construct validity revealed that the Turkish form supported a three-factor structure consistent with the original scale. Accordingly, the fit indices were within the acceptable limits. Since there is no other measurement tool that evaluates men's body attitude in the Turkish literature, the MBAS would be a functional tool to use in clinical practice and future research.
Keywords: body image in men, reliability, validity, adaptation,