Translation and Validation of the Chinese Version of the Male Body Attitude Scale (MBAS)

Abstract

Introduction: The Male body attitude scale developed and validated by Tylka and his colleagues in 2005 has been widely used as a reliable instrument exploring body attitudes related to low body fat, muscularity and height among adult males. However, there has been no research exploring whether the Male Body Attitude Scale is suitable or not to be generalized into the Chinese context.

Objectives: The current study is aimed to translate the original Male Body Attitude Scale into Chinese and validate the Chinese version among a sample of 410 Chinese adult males.

Method: CFA is conducted to validate the MBAS.

Results: The phase 1 CFA indicated that both the original three-factor structure and the two-factor structure consisting of muscularity and body fat of MBAS might not fit the current sample, so EFAs and phase 2 CFA were conducted and revealed that a new two-factor structure had acceptable model fit and can be used when accessing body attitudes among Chinese adult males. The ordinal Cronbach’s was 0.90, 0.86, and 0.93 for the full scale, the Muscularity subscale and the Low body fat subscale, respectively.

Conclusions: The MBAS is a reliable indicator to assess male body attitudes.