Reliability and Validity of the Turkish Version of the Short Behavioral Inhibition Scale

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Speech-Language Pathology

Background:

• Behavioral inhibition is a key personality trait.
• Assessing behavioral inhibition in children is crucial for understanding developmental and clinical outcomes.
• Cross-cultural adaptation of psychological measures ensures their applicability in diverse populations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To translate and culturally adapt the Short Behavioral Inhibition Scale (SBIS) into Turkish (SBIS-TR).
• To evaluate the reliability and validity of the SBIS-TR in a sample of Turkish children.
• To examine the scale's utility in differentiating between children who stutter (CWS) and children who do not stutter (CWNS).

Main Methods:

• Cross-cultural adaptation of the SBIS into Turkish.
• Administration of the SBIS-TR to 227 children (CWS and CWNS) and their parents.
• Reliability assessment using Cronbach's alpha and test-retest correlation.
• Validity assessment via confirmatory factor analysis and correlations with established measures (BIQ-TR, KiddyCAT-TR).

Main Results:

• The SBIS-TR exhibited excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = .86) and test-retest reliability (r = .96).
• Confirmatory factor analysis supported a single-factor structure, indicating good structural validity.
• Convergent validity was supported by significant negative correlations with BIQ-TR and KiddyCAT-TR.
• No significant difference in SBIS-TR scores was found between CWS and CWNS groups (p = .235).

Conclusions:

• The SBIS-TR is a reliable and valid measure for assessing behavioral inhibition in Turkish children.
• Evidence supports the convergent validity of the SBIS-TR.
• The lack of group differences between CWS and CWNS suggests limitations in the scale's construct validity for differentiating these specific groups.