Keywords

adolescent behaviors, reliability, ALP scale, validity

 

Authors

  1. Ardic, Aysun

ABSTRACT

Background: The Adolescent Lifestyle Profile (ALP) scale, based on the Health Promotion Model, is designed to asses the health promotion lifestyle profile of adolescents. This study is the first psychometric research of the ALP scale.

 

Purpose: The aims of this study were to translate the ALP scale into Turkish and to assess its psychometric properties with 890 adolescents between the ages of 14 and 18 years.

 

Methods: Data on reliability and validity were assessed using the item-total correlations, Cronbach's [alpha] coefficient, content validity index, exploratory factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Participants were divided randomly into two groups, with the data from one group subjected to exploratory factor analysis and the data from the other group subjected to confirmatory factor analysis.

 

Results: Content validity was confirmed by a satisfactory level of agreement with a content validity index of .91. Varimax rotation yielded seven factors with eigenvalues greater than 1, which explained 46.87% of the total variance. Four items were removed because of factor loadings of less than .30. The revised 40-item ALP was tested, and the values of the goodness fit index were [chi]2 = 176.05, df = 91, p < .001, [chi]2/df = 1.93, goodness-of-fit index = .93, comparative fit index = .94, adjusted goodness-of-fit index = .90, root mean square error of approximation residual = .060, and standardized root mean square residual = .060. The total Cronbach's [alpha] coefficient was .87, and subscales ranged from .61 to .81. The item-total corelations ranged between .22 and .64.

 

Conclusions/Implications for Practice: The results confirm that the Turkish ALP scale has acceptable psychometric properties and that the scale may be used with Turkish adolescents as an effective measure of their health-promoting lifestyle behaviors.