Turkish Adaptation of The Mindful Eating Scale (MIND-EAT Scale): Validity and Reliability Study

Although eating behavior is primarily a physiological response to hunger, social and cultural factors can also trigger eating even when there is no need to eat. Extrinsically motivated eating behavior cannot be regulated by the body's signals of satiety. Therefore, approaches such as mindful eating (ME) have been developed to reduce the influence of extrinsic motivation and increase the importance of intrinsic motivation and the sensory properties of food. ME is the state of focusing on and being mindful of food while eating. Although the goal is not weight loss, it is thought that paying attention to the experience of food can increase awareness of the impact of food on a person and lead to healthier choices. Mindfulness has proven positive effects on overall health and is recommended by the American Heart Association. Furthermore, mindfulness-based approaches have been shown to have positive effects on changing maladaptive eating behaviors in individuals of different weights. Given these positive aspects, it is important to have a comprehensive scale that covers all aspects of mindful eating and offers an overall scoring.

In this study, it is aimed to adapt the MIND-EAT scale into Turkish and to analyze its validity and reliability.

Type, Population and Sample of the Study:

The sample of the study will consist of individuals aged 18 and over. Individuals who are volunteers and have no communication problems will be included in the study. The approval of the participants will be obtained in the study, which will be started if the ethics committee approval is obtained. Care will be taken to ensure that the number of men and women in the sample is close to each other. In the validity and reliability study, data will be collected with an online questionnaire. In the internal construct validity phase of the study, it was aimed to reach at least 360 individuals by including at least 15 people for each item in the scale (24 x 15 = 360) for the sample size calculation.

The scale will be administered to at least 360 individuals aged 18 years and over by non-probability, random sampling method. A "participant number" will be given to the form filled out by each participant. The scale will be reapplied 2 weeks later to a minimum of 20 participants, which is required for test-retest reliability.