Abstract
CONTEXT: With the changing lifestyle in modern society, the youth has become the target of substantial noise exposure. Both environmental noise and the use of personal electronic devices create a risk for youth's hearing conservation as reported in several studies. AIMS: This study aims to adapt and validate the Youth Attitude to Noise Scale (YANS), developed by Widén and Erlandsson for use in the Turkish setting. SETTINGS AND DESIGN: The linguistic adaptation of the YANS into Turkish (YANS-Tr) was conducted with three experts in linguistics. A cross-sectional study was designed for high school students to establish the evidence for the reliability and validity of the scale. METHODS AND MATERIAL: 345 high school students participated in the pilot study. The demographic data form developed by the researcher was used to retrieve the information related to participants. Lastly, the 19-item YANS-Tr was delivered to students. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS USED: Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed for the construct validity. The Cronbach's alpha coefficients were calculated for each dimension and the whole scale. RESULTS: Four-dimensional structure was yielded for the YANS-Tr as in the original version of the scale. However, some items (8th, 10th, 18th, and 19th) were loaded under different dimensions. The reliability coefficient of the scale (Cronbach's α = 0.79) was within the acceptable range. The mean overall YANS-Tr score was 2.68. When the mean scores are compared with other countries, Turkey stands higher than Sweden (2.10), close to Serbia (2.76) and Brazil (2.80), and lower than Belgium (3.10) and China (3.46). CONCLUSIONS: The YANS-Tr is shown to be a valid and reliable assessment tool to evaluate the students' attitude to noise in Turkey.