Adaptation of the Generalized Trust in News Media Scale into Turkish: A Validity and Reliability Study

<jats:p xml:lang="en">This study investigates the Turkish adaptation of the Generalized Trust in News Media Scale and evaluates its measurement properties in Türkiye. Originally developed by Prochazka and Schweiger, the instrument was translated and culturally adapted using a systematic forward–backward translation procedure. The empirical stage followed a quantitative design, and data were gathered from 525 participants from diverse age and occupational groups through convenience sampling. After confirming linguistic equivalence, statistical procedures were conducted to assess construct structure and reliability. The underlying dimensional framework was first explored through exploratory factor analysis and then tested via confirmatory factor analysis to examine model fit. Measurement reliability was evaluated using Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability (CR), and average variance extracted (AVE). Findings revealed a three-dimensional structure comprising 15 items, explaining 61.69% of the total variance. Confirmatory analysis supported this structure and indicated acceptable to strong model fit values. The overall Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was .90, and subdimension reliability coefficients were above recommended thresholds. Overall, results show that the Turkish version represents a statistically sound instrument for measuring generalized trust in news media and is suitable for quantitative research in media and communication studies.</jats:p>