Frontiers in nutrition
Cultural adaptation and validation of the SESMEB scale for assessing the influence of social media on the eating habits of adolescents in the city of Doboj, Bosnia and Herzegovina
By Stojisavljević D, Jotić Ivanović M, Mijović B and 3 others.
Abstract
Introduction
Marketing of foods high in fat, sugar and salt shapes the food preferences and intake of children and adolescents. The primary aim of this study was to culturally adapt and validate the Scale of Effects of Social Media on Eating Behavior (SESMEB) for assessing the influence of social media on the eating habits of adolescents in the Republic of Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to examine whether this influence differs by sex, place of residence, nutritional status and school attended.
Methods
A cross-sectional study was conducted in six secondary schools in the city of Doboj in May 2023 and included 362 adolescents attending the third and fourth grades. The SESMEB scale was cross-culturally adapted into Serbian through forward and back-translation, expert panel review and pre-testing. Internal consistency was assessed by Cronbach's alpha and corrected item-total correlations, the factor structure by exploratory factor analysis, and test-retest reproducibility in a subsample of 14 respondents by the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Group differences were tested by t-test and ANOVA.