Validity and Reliability Testing Study of the Turkish Version of the Misophonia Scale

Abstract

Misophonia is a disorder where individuals experience decreased tolerance to certain sounds that trigger intense emotional or physiological responses in them. People with misophonia can feel disgust, anger, anxiety, and they may experience anger outbursts when exposed to certain sounds that are insignificant to other people, such as chewing, lip-smacking, and breathing. There is no consensus on the prevalence, assessment, and management of misophonia. A major barrier to the research on misophonia is the lack of robust psychometric assessment tools. This study aims to meet the need for a measurement tool for clinical and population-based evaluations intended for misophonia by adapting the Misophonia Questionnaire (Wu et al., 2014) to Turkish. The research was carried out on 638 undergraduate students at Baskent University, from 18 to 26 years of age. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted on 420 participants (73% female, 27% male) and confirmatory factor analysis was conducted on 218 participants (62% female, 38% male). The statistical reliability was evaluated using the internal consistency coefficient, split half, and test-retest methods. In the Misophonia Questionnaire, misophonia was explained by the following three subscale factors: misophonia symptoms, misophonia emotions and behaviors-avoidance and internalization, and misophonia emotions and behaviors-aggression and externalization. These were used in the exploratory factor analysis. The confirmatory factor analysis found that the fit indexes were within acceptable limits. With the discriminant validity, the participants with clinical misophonia were observed to have a higher mean in all factors than those without. The internal consistency coefficient of the scale was calculated at .89, and for the three subscale factors mentioned earlier were .79, .85, and .83, respectively. The calculated test-retest reliability coefficient was .78, which applied to 75 participants. The split-half reliability coefficient was .83 (for each subscale factor, was .86, .87, and .81, respectively). With this study, the Misophonia Questionnaire, which can be used to evaluate misophonia in the general population, was adapted into Turkish. From the psychometric analysis, data supporting the validity and reliability of the Misophonia Scale were obtained.