Cross-cultural adaptation and apparent and content validity of the short version of The Eating Motivation Survey (TEMS) in Brazilian Portuguese

Understanding why people eat what they eat is essential for developing nutritional guidelines capable of modifying inadequate and dysfunctional eating patterns. Such understanding can be assessed by specific instruments, amongst which The Eating Motivation Survey (TEMS) allows the identification of factors that determine motivations for eating and food choices. The aim of this study is to present the cross-cultural adaptation of the short version of TEMS for use in studies in the Brazilian population. The process involved conceptual and item equivalences; semantic equivalence by 2 translators, 1 linguist, 22 experts (frequency of response understanding), and 23 bilingual individuals (with response comparisons by the paired t-test, Pearson correlation coefficient, and intra-class correlation coefficient); and operational equivalence, performed with 32 individuals. The measurement equivalence corresponding to psychometric properties is under way. All equivalences showed satisfactory results for the scale’s use in Brazil, thus allowing application of TEMS to assess motivations for eating choices in the Brazilian context.