Validity and Reliability Study of Turkish Version of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Literacy Scale

Mental health literacy is a concept to improve the skills of individuals to take responsibility in the field of mental health, directing their behavior, facilitating access to and obtaining information, understanding, evaluating, using and maintaining information.

The aim of this study is to determine the psychometric properties of the Turkish version of the mental health literacy scale for children and adolescents.

Methodological, and a cross sectional study.

The study was conducted with a total of 543 students between 13-20 years of age from one high school and two secondary schools in the city of Izmir in western Türkiye between September and November 2019. The mean age of children was 16.8±1.35. Adaptation method that includes, forward translation, blind back translation, comparison, and pilot testing of the pre-final version was applied. The data were collected with questions about the socio-demographic characteristics of the students and the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Literacy scale consisting of five items. In evaluating the data, internal consistency, item-total score correlation, test-retest correlation coefficients were examined for the reliability analysis. For validity analysis: the content validity index (CVI) based on expert opinion was evaluated with the correlation coefficient for criterion validity.

The content validity index for expert opinions is 1.00. The Cronbach Alpha internal consistency reliability coefficient (α) of the scale is .60. Item-total score correlation coefficients of the scale were determined between 0.16 and 0.78. The test-retest correlation coefficient and its time invariance were examined, and it was found to be 1.00, highly significant (p <0.01).

Study was shown that the Turkish version of the Child and Adolescent MHL scale was a valid and reliable tool in the sample of Turkish children.

Nurses can use this scale assessment and evaluating applied strategies.