Psychometric evaluation of beliefs and attitudes of drug use scale in youth

Purpose: The aim of this study was to adapt the beliefs and attitudes of substance abuse scale, and to assess the validity and reliability of the scale in Turkish adolescents. Methods: A convenience sample of 436 undergraduate students was recruited from a university in Turkey. Item analysis, principal component analysis, internal consistency reliability and Cronbach's alpha were used to measure the psychometric properties of the items of the scale. Results: There were identified two factors with eigenvalues greater than 1 explained 54.1% of the total variance (beliefs and attitudes of substance abuse scale). Factor analysis yielded that all of factor loadings were above 0.40 and factor loadings of the items ranged from 0.47 to 0.66 in the scales. Internal reliability coefficients were 0.81 and 0.76 for the two dimensions. Conclusion: The present study provides evidence of the beliefs and attitudes of substance abuse scale's validity, reliability and acceptability in Turkish adolescents.