The Body Esteem Scale for Adults and Adolescents: Translation, adaptation and psychometric validation among Brazilian adolescents

Validation of a Latin American Spanish version of the Body Esteem Scale for Adolescents and Adults (BESAA-LA) in Colombian and Nicaraguan adults

“…This is in line with other validation and cultural adaptation studies, that found various factor structures. However, the structure we found resembles the structure found in a validation study of Brazilian adolescents (Smith et al, 2022). This resemblance is not surprising, as these Latin American countries share geographical proximity, as well as a focus on appearance and beauty, which is re ected in high incidences of plastic surgery per capita in both Colombia and Brazil (International Association for Aesthetic/Cosmetic surgery survey 2020).…”

“…For instance, the mean score for the appearance-positive subscale was higher compared to the negative subscale, which suggests that respondents agreed less strongly with negative statements about their body (e.g., "I worry about the way I look"), compared to positive statements (e.g., "I like what I look like in pictures"). The third subscale weight has been found consistently across all validation studies conducted so far (Original validation: (Mendelson et al, 2001), Iceland (Jónsdóttir et al, 2008), Italy (Confalonieri et al, 2008), Turkey (Arslan et al, 2020), India (Garbett et al, 2021), Spain (Beltrán-Garrayo et al, 2023) and Brazil (Smith et al, 2022). The consistency could be due to the fact that all items that mention weight are easily recognizable for respondents as re ecting the same concept.…”

“…As no items were considered redundant, all were retained, as was done in the Brazilian validation study (Smith et al, 2022). The 22-item BESAA and all subscales showed good to excellent internal reliability (total: α = .94, ω = .95; appearance-positive: α = .92, ω = .94; appearance-negative: α = .86, ω = .90 and weight: α = .85, ω = .69).…”

“…in a US sample, the items tted better in the weight subscale for adolescent girls, but not for adolescent boys (Cragun et al, 2013) and a variety of different factor structures and number of items have emerged across different translation and cultural adaptation studies. The BESAA has been translated and validated in Icelandic (Jónsdóttir et al, 2008), Italian (Confalonieri et al, 2008), French (Rousseau et al, 2015;Valls et al, 2011), Turkish (Arslan et al, 2020), and Portuguese (Smith et al, 2022). The English version has also been culturally adapted to different cultural contexts in urban India (Garbett et al, 2021) and Singapore (Chang et al, 2019).…”

“…In contrast, validations among adolescents in Italy and children in Turkey found the original structure with 14 and 15-item versions respectively, but this involved the removal of several items with poor factor loading and high cross loadings (Arslan et al, 2020;Confalonieri et al, 2008). Moreover, in India, France and Brazil, the original factor structure was not supported, and new structures emerged including two-, three-, and four-factor solutions (see Garbett et al, 2021;Rousseau et al, 2015;Smith et al, 2022;Valls et al, 2011). Even though the BESAA was rst translated into Argentinian Spanish by Forbes et al, (2012), its psychometric validity was only assessed ten years later by Beltrán-Garrayo et al, (2023) with adolescents in Spain.…”