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Translation and Validation of the Social Network Sites Food Preoccupation Scale Malay Version among Malaysian
University Undergraduates
Terjemahan dan Pengesahsahihan Skala Keasyikan Makanan Laman Rangkaian Sosial Versi Bahasa Melayu dalam kalangan Pelajar Universiti Malaysia
VIMALA GOVINDASAMY, SERENE EN HUI TUNG, FARAH FAZLINDA BINTI MOHAMAD, WON SUN CHEN, MENG CHUAN HO, NORFAIZADATUL AKMA MOHAMAD MASWAN, CHING SIN SIAU
& YOGARABINDRANATH SWARNA NANTHA
ABSTRACT
Understanding the influence of social network sites (SNS) on food preoccupation is important to understanding the reasons behind the obesity epidemic and other food-related issues, such as food addiction and eating disorders, especially among university students. We documented the adaptation process and established the validity and reliability of the Social Network Sites Food Preoccupation Scale Malay Version among 100 students at a private university in Malaysia. Principal components analysis suggests the items in the inventory fall into a two-factor solution, consisting of an active (i.e., actively sharing and creating content) and a passive aspect (i.e., passively consuming content) of SNS food preoccupation. The scale demonstrates good convergent validity against the Malay Yale Food Addiction Scale 2.0, with an acceptable internal consistency and reliability overall (α = 0.886), in the Active subscale (α = 0.920), but were low in the Passive subscale (α = 0.653). The adapted Social Network Sites Food Preoccupation Scale (Malay Version) is deemed valid for usage among university students in Malaysia but requires further testing of its internal consistency.
Keywords: Social media network, food preoccupation, reliability, validity, cross-cultural validation, Malaysia, university students
ABSTRAK
Memahami pengaruh Laman Rangkaian Sosial (SNS) terhadap keasyikan makanan adalah penting untuk memahami faktor penyebab kepada epidemik obesiti dan isu berkaitan makanan yang lain seperti ketagihan makanan dan gangguan makan, terutamanya dalam kalangan pelajar universiti. Kami menjalankan dokumentasi melalui proses adaptasi, kesahan dan kebolehpercayaan Skala Keasyikan Makanan Laman Rangkaian Sosial versi Bahasa Melayu dalam kalangan 100 orang pelajar di sebuah universiti swasta di Malaysia. Analisis komponen utama mencadangkan bahawa item soal selidik mempunyai dua faktor, yang terdiri daripada aspek aktif (iaitu, berkongsi dan mencipta kandungan secara aktif) dan aspek pasif (iaitu, penerapan maklumat yang pasif) bagi keasyikan tentang makanan dalam media sosial. Skala menunjukkan kesahan konvergen terhadap Skala Ketagihan Makanan Yale versi Bahasa Melayu 2.0, di mana ketekalan dalaman dan kebolehpercayaan boleh diterima untuk keseluruhan skala (α = 0.886), dan subskala Aktif (α = 0.920), tetapi rendah bagi subskala Pasif (α = 0.653). Skala Keasyikan Makanan dalam Laman Rangkaian Sosial Versi Bahasa Melayu yang diadaptasi dianggap sah untuk digunakan dalam kalangan pelajar universiti di Malaysia, tetapi memerlukan ujian lanjut tentang ketekalan dalaman ujian tersebut.
Kata kunci: Rangkaian media sosial, keasyikan makanan, kebolehpercayaan, kesahan, pengesahsahihan silang budaya, Malaysia, pelajar universiti
INTRODUCTION
The role media plays in our daily lives has taken a remarkable departure from its conventionally intended purpose over recent decades. From just a rudimentary tool designed for entertainment and
dissemination of knowledge, the influence of media now is now more far-reaching, mediating both social and cultural paradigms in the community.
This trajectory signifies the powerful effect media has on our lives, which in many ways, has also transformed local social practices such as eating
habits within the population (Saunders & Eaton 2018). Exposure to traditional media (magazines and television) has, without doubt, accelerated the development of these trends (thin-ideal internalization) (Šmahel et al. 2018). On the other hand, there appears to be a tendency to consume a greater quantity of food among adolescents with a television watching habit, purportedly primed by contents in advertisements that appear to encourage the consumption of specific food products (Šmahel et al. 2018).
The role of emerging giants of social media grew at an accelerate pace (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) in tandem with the evolution of technology quickly triggering a valid concern about an increased risk of unhealthy eating (Wilksch et al. 2020). This situation is possibly linked to wide (and most likely mutual) dissemination of photos and videos related to food. As a result, the ubiquity of food messages now extends beyond mainstream media (cookbooks, magazines, and television) to online social platforms such as the blogs, websites, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest (Wadhera et al. 2014).
The culmination of these events led to a greater inclination to poor eating habits in people who spend most of their time online especially on social media such as Facebook and Instagram (Rounsefell et al. 2019). Flooded by constant assortments of food cues, these individuals are susceptible to physiological responses from the pictures and videos of food, bringing down the threshold for food satiety and an escalating hunger. When left unmitigated, the eating patterns in the society could diverge from what is seen as a balanced diet to unhealthy food consumption habits, potentially bringing about ill health effects such as obesity and other non-communicable diseases (Forbes & Dahl 2012).
Research suggests external cues have a significant influence on food consumption behaviour in adults (Wadhera et al. 2014).
Additionally, a classic study indicates that the exposure to the sensory properties of palatable foods (including their visual properties) has increased the subjective desire for and consumption of food in spite of being fully satiated to begin with (Cornell et al. 1989). Moreover, recent studies have confirmed the importance of external cues in stimulating preoccupation with food and disordered eating (Apricio-Martinez et al. 2019; Imperatori et al. 2021).
One of the risk factors of high prevalence of non-communicable diseases and obesity in Malaysia is a poor food environment. (Swarna Nantha 2014) For example, in 2014, 67% of premature deaths in Malaysia were attributed to non-communicable diseases (Institute for Public Health 2017), and 50.1% of Malaysians were overweight or obese in 2019 (Institute for Public
Health 2020). These alarming trends call for a greater exploration of Social Network Sites (SNS)- related food preoccupation in Malaysia, primarily because food preoccupation has been linked to dieting behaviour, emotional eating and is associated with eating disorders (Williams et al.
2017). With that in mind, there is a pressing need to understand the implications of social media-related food preoccupation in Malaysia. This step can be facilitated by the translation and validation of the SNS Food Preoccupation Scale into the Malay language to preemptively screen vulnerable individuals in the society.
EXPERIMENTAL METHODS
STUDY DESIGN
This is a cross-sectional online study on university students in Malaysia to establish the validity and reliability of the Social Network Sites Food Preoccupation Scale Malay Version.
PHASE I: TRANSLATION AND CROSS- CULTURAL ADAPTATION PROCESS The Social Network Sites Food Preoccupation Scale English Version was forward- and backward- translated from English to Malay independently by two subject-matter experts and two linguistic experts. With regards to the subject-matter experts, one was a public health specialist (forward translation) and another was a media expert (backward translation). To ensure content validity, a harmonization meeting was held to combine the two versions of the translated questionnaire, which were developed by a multi-disciplinary team of psychological, communication, nutrition, and public health experts.
Based on the discussion, it was agreed that some items needed to be changed to suit the Malaysian context and the objective of the scale.
For example, for Item 1, “Frequency of posting pictures of food on SNS”, we have added examples
“(e.g., Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Pinterest)” in order that the participants understand the context of SNS. Item 3, “Frequency of sending food pictures on WhatsApp,” was changed to
“Frequency of sending food pictures on SNS” to reflect the wider number of SNS platforms that Malaysians use to disseminate their pictures.
PHASE II: VALIDATION PROCESS Participants
To validate a questionnaire, two to 20 participants per item were needed (Hair et al. 2018; Kline 1979). In this study, assuming 10 participants were
needed per item, 100 participants were targeted for recruitment.
For the inclusion criteria, participants should be Malaysian university students who were actively enrolled in an undergraduate or postgraduate programme at a university. Exclusion criteria included international students and those who were unable or unwilling to provide informed consent.
Measures
Two scales were employed in this study. The first scale was the Social Network Site Food Preoccupation Scale. This scale was originally employed in a study on the effects of exposure to foods on food cravings and external eating (Neter et al. 2018). The scale is an eight-item scale that measures the extent of food preoccupation through Social Network Sites (SNS) activities. Responses to the eight questions were on a 5-point scale, ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (very often). The original questionnaire included an additional item that inquired about the number of memberships in food-related SNS groups. This question was excluded from our study because it was not related to food preoccupation on social networking sites.
The original questionnaire achieved an internal consistency reliability of.840.
The second scale that was employed was the Yale Food Addiction Scale 2.0 (YFAS), which was a self-administered scale developed by Gearhardt et al. (2016) to examine the eating habits of individuals over the past 12 months. In this study, the 26-item Malay YFAS 2.0 (Swarna Nantha et al.
2016) was employed. The Malay Version of YFAS 2.0 achieved a good internal consistency reliability estimate of.76 in the original study (Swarna Nantha et al. 2016), and .97 in this study. The YFAS 2.0 was intended to be used to examine the discriminant validity of the SNSFP, as food preoccupation is an aspect of food addiction, and yet food addiction encompasses wider aspects of addiction that include, for example, using despite negative consequences and craving (Gearhardt et al. 2016).
Procedures
Participants were sampled based on the convenient sampling method. Using an online platform (Google Forms), snowball sampling was used to disseminate the questionnaire. Participation was voluntary, and strict confidentiality was maintained because no identifier was used in the questionnaires. After giving informed consent, participants filled out the questionnaire.
Statistical Analysis
Statistical analysis was conducted using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 25. Exploratory factor analysis involving the principal component analysis (PCA) extraction and varimax rotation was used to assess the construct validity of the Social Network Sites Food Preoccupation Scale Malay Version. Items with <
0.40 communality and < 0.40 factor loading were excluded from further analysis. Pearson’s correlation analysis was conducted to test the relationship between SNSFP and the Malay version of YFAS 2.0 in order to establish discriminant validity.
The Cronbach’s reliability test (α ≥ 0.70;
Cronbach 1951; DeVellis 2012) was employed to assess the overall internal consistency of the scale as well as its subscales. Items that contributed to low reliability coefficients were excluded from further analysis.
Approvals
This research obtained ethical approval from the UCSI University Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC-2020-FOSSLA-004). The authors complied with the required ethical standards (see Fig. 1).
RESULTS
PARTICIPANT CHARACTERISTICS There were a total of 105 respondents in this study.
However, four were excluded from further analysis due to not being Malaysian respondents. One participant was excluded due to missing data. Of the remaining 100 participants, most were female (72.5%). More than half were Chinese (51.0%), and 43.0% were Buddhists. About one-third had average monthly household income of RM2501- RM5000 (36.0%) (see Table 1).
FIGURE 1 Translation and Validation process of the Malay Social Network Site Food Preoccupation Scale (SNSFP)
TABLE 1 Participant demographics (N = 100)
Variable Frequency (n) Percentage/%
Gender
Male 26 26.0
Female 74 74.0
Race
Malay 29 29.0
Chinese 51 51.0
Indian 9 9.0
Others 11 11.0
Religion
Islam 30 30.0
Buddhism 43 43.0
Hinduism 10 10.0
Christianity 14 14.0
Other 3 3.0
Average monthly household income
Below RM2500 30 30.0
RM2501-RM5000 36 36.0
RM5001-RM8000 13 13.0
RM8001-RM10000 8 8.0
More than RM10000 13 13.0
VALIDITY ANALYSIS
The minimum amount of data for factor analysis was met, with 10 cases per questionnaire item.
Factorization through the use of principle- component analysis (PCA) using Varimax rotation revealed that the communalities for all items were above .40, ranging from 0.540 to 0.876. The results revealed that there is an acceptable Kaiser-Meyer- Olkin measure of sampling adequacy (KMO = 0.876) above the recommended value of 0.60, and Bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant (χ2 (28)
= 458.71, p < 0.001). The diagonals of the anti- image correlation matrix of all items ranged from 0.842 to 0.912, supporting the inclusion of each item in the factor analysis.
The rotated component matrix and examination of the scree plot suggested that a two- factor solution is suitable, which explained 70.4%
of the variance, with the first component explaining 46.3%, and the second component explaining 24.1% of the variance. The first component was named “Active, Creating Content”, as it included activities which denoted an active and creative nature of the food preoccupation, such as posting pictures on the Social Network Sites (SNS) and taking food pictures in the restaurant. The second component was named “Passive, Consuming Content”, as the questions denoted a more receptive and passive interaction regarding food preoccupation. All items had primary loadings over 0.40, ranging from 0.674 to 0.912 (see Table 2).
TABLE 2 Explained Variance, Factor Loadings, and Communalities Based on a Principal Components Analysis with Varimax Rotation for 6 Items from the Social Network Site Food Preoccupation Scale Malay Version (n = 100)
Item Explained
variance/%
Factor
loading Communality Cronbach’s alpha
Total 70.4 0.886
Factor 1: Active, Creating Content 46.3 0.920
7. Frequency of posting pictures of food one is about to eat
Kekerapan menyiarkan gambar-gambar makanan yang anda akan makan
0.912 0.876
6. Frequency of posting pictures of food one 0.878 0.792
prepared
Kekerapan menyiarkan gambar-gambar makanan yang anda sediakan
3. Frequency of sending food pictures on SNS
Kekerapan menghantar gambar-gambar makanan di laman sosial
0.816 0.764
8. Frequency of taking pictures of dishes ordered in a restaurant
Kekerapan mengambil gambar-gambar yang dipesan di restoran.
0.810 0.698
1. Frequency of posting pictures of food on SNS (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, or Pinterest)
Kekerapan anda menyiarkan gambar- gambar makanan di laman sosial (cth., Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, or Pinterest)
0.754 0.691
Factor 2: Passive, Consuming Content 24.1 0.653
2. Frequency of encountering food pictures on SNS
Kekerapan anda melihat gambar-gambar makanan di laman sosial
0.828 0.689
4. Frequency of receiving food pictures on SNS
Kekerapan menerima gambar-gambar makanan di laman sosial
0.678 0.585
5. Frequency of following chefs, restaurants or brands
Kekerapan mengikuti laman sosial chef- chef, restoran, atau jenama
0.674 0.540
CONVERGENT VALIDITY
The results of the convergent validity analysis using Pearson correlation between the SNSFP and Malay version of YFAS 2.0 revealed that there was a correlation between the variables with a medium effect size, r (98) = 0.392, p < 0.001.
RELIABILITY ANALYSIS
The Cronbach’s alpha value for Factor 1(active, creating content domain) was .920, and Factor 2 (passive, consuming content domain) was 0.653.
The overall Cronbach’s alpha value for the adapted Malay Social Network Sites Food Preoccupation Scale was 0.886.
DISCUSSION
The aim of this paper was to document the translation and validation process of the Social Network Sites Food Preoccupation Scale (SNSFP) in Malay. The results found that the SNSFP demonstrated acceptable psychometric properties when tested among Malaysian university students
in two studies and is therefore valid and reliable to be used among Malaysians.
Regarding the results of the PCA, the data was suited to a two-factor solution, which accounted for 77.2% of the variance, higher than the cut-off value of 60%. In addition, all items had primary loadings of at least .60 and above, indicating that the items were strongly correlated with other items in the same factor. Our two domains of the SNS Food Preoccupation Scale denote that engagement with the SNS could be active or passive. The distinction may be important, as studies have shown that compared to those who actively create and engage with others on social media, individuals who are passive consumers (or “lurkers”) may be more prone to lower well-being (Tromholt 2016;
Verduyn et al. 2015).
In addition, the convergent validity analysis showed that SNS food preoccupation was significantly correlated with food addiction, and the correlation coefficient was moderate, showing that food addiction and food preoccupation on the SNS were indeed related concepts. Food preoccupation has been shown to be strongly and inextricably linked to food addiction in past studies, perhaps due to the sense of craving that is common in
addictions (Meule & Kübler 2012; Meule &
Gearhardt 2014).
Finally, the reliability analysis showed that the overall scale and Public Aspect subscale achieved good internal consistency reliability coefficients, indicating these items measured the same construct or content (Tavakol & Dennick 2011). In the original study, the internal consistency of the overall scale was .840 (Neter et al. 2018), which is equivalent to the good internal consistency values obtained in this study. However, for the Passive, Content Consuming Aspect subscale, it was not acceptable at .661. Therefore, the Passive subscale is not reliable.
There are a few limitations to this study. First of all, the study did not establish other forms of validity such as concurrent or predictive validity. In addition, participants were self-selected as this was an online cross-sectional survey; therefore, participant bias could not be ruled out. Future studies should validate this questionnaire among other populations, such as the adolescent population. In addition, other forms of validity could be tested among a larger sample of randomly selected participants.
In conclusion, this study shows that the Malay SNSFP is a valid and reliable scale to be used among university students in Malaysia, but there needs to be more studies to explore the internal consistency of its subscales.
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Vimala Govindasamy
Norfaizadatul Akma Mohamad Maswan Faculty of Social Sciences and Liberal Arts UCSI University, Federal Territory Kuala Lumpur Malaysia
Serene En Hui Tung
Division of Nutrition and Dietetics School of Health Sciences
International Medical University, Bukit Jalil, 57000 Federal Territory Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia
Farah Fazlinda Binti Mohamad
Faculty of Languages and Communication Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris
Tanjong Malim, Perak Malaysia
Won Sun Chen
School of Health Sciences
Swinburne University of Technology, Victoria Australia
Meng Chuan Ho Centre for Pre-U Studies
UCSI University (Springhill Campus) Negeri Sembilan
Malaysia
Ching Sin Siau
Centre for Community Health Studies (ReaCH) Faculty of Health Sciences
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia
Yogarabindranath Swarna Nantha Department of General Practice Clinical School Johor Bahru Monash University
Malaysia
Corresponding author: Ching Sin Siau E-mail: [email protected] Tel: +603-92898903
Fax: -
Received: 8 March 2023 Revised: 15 June 2023
Accepted for publication: 6 July 2023
