Cross-Cultural Adaptation and Validation of the Turkish Form of the Awareness Scale on Consumption of Irradiated Foods (ASCIF).

Food irradiation is a well-established technology endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to enhance food safety. However, consumer awareness of irradiated foods remains remarkably low across diverse cultural contexts. This study aimed to cross-culturally adapt and validate the Turkish form of the Awareness Scale for Consumption of Irradiated Foods (ASCIF). The ASCIF, originally developed and validated in Brazil, encompasses 31 items distributed across four factors: safety of irradiated foods (S), concepts (C), labeling (L), and awareness (A). The cross-cultural adaptation process adhered to the International Test Commission (ITC) guidelines, involving forward-backward translation and expert panel review. A total of 346 university-affiliated individuals (82.9% female; mean age 21.3 ± 4.8 years) from Gazi University, Ankara, completed an online survey with the adapted Turkish version of the ASCIF. Although the internal consistency results indicated a high level of reliability (α = 0.963), other indicators, such as ESEM analysis (RMSEA (90% CI) = 0.143 (0.139-0.148), CFI = 0.880, and TLI = 0.870), suggest that the cross-cultural adaptation of the ASCIF scale into Turkish encountered significant challenges, particularly regarding its psychometric validation. These complications indicate that the original construct may not have translated seamlessly across the cultural and linguistic nuances of the Turkish context in this study.