A Study on Turkish Adaptation, Validity and Reliability of the Brief Autism Mealtime Behavior Inventory (BAMBI)

The purpose of this study is to determine the psychometric properties of the Brief Autism Mealtime Behavior Inventory. After ensuring linguistic equivalence of the scale, it was applied to 308 mothers who have children with autism to determine the mealtime behavior of the children with autism. The scale, which has 3 sub-domain and 5 liker type, consists of 18 items originally. After the validity and reliability work, 4 items were eliminated and 14 items remained. The results of Confirmatory Factor Analysis (x2/sd=3.6, RMSEA=.09, SRMR=.07, GFI=.89, AGFI=.84, IFI=.90, CFI=.90) showed that the scale has an acceptable goodness of fit. The internal consistency coefficient (α=.79) and values of the split-half reliability (Pearson r=.86 and Spearman's rho=.83) were high. Item-total correlations of the scale were acceptable and t-tests between items’ means of upper 27%-lower 27% points were significant. According to the results, it can be said that the scale can be used as a valid and reliable scale to determine the mealtime behavior of the children with autism in Turkey.