Cross-cultural adaptation of the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Scale-4 (SATAQ-4) applied to university students

The aim of this study was to translate and culturally adapt the Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Scale-4 (SATAQ-4) to the Portuguese language and assess its validity and reliability when applied to Brazilian students. Face, content, and pretest validity were assessed. In order to assess the levels of misunderstanding, a pretest was performed with 91 students from three Portuguese-speaking countries (25 Brazilians, 37 Portuguese, and 29 Mozambicans). Construct validity was estimated using a confirmatory strategy with chi-square by degrees of freedom ratio (chi(2)/df), comparative fit index (CFI), Tucker-Lewis index (TLI), and root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). The reliability was estimated. Invariance was estimated for independent samples, for sex and presence/absence of overweight/obesity. Students participating in the pretest understood all the items in SATAQ-4. Participation in the main study included 1,051 Brazilian university students (age = 20.9 years (SD = 2.4), 66.4% women). SATAQ-4 presented adequate validity (chi(2)/df = 8.39; CFI = 0.98, TLI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.08) and reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.84-0.95) in the sample. The model showed invariance between independent samples and was not invariant according to sex or presence/absence of overweight/obesity. In conclusion, SATAQ-4 is a valid and reliable instrument for a sample of Brazilian university students, as an alternative for assessing sociocultural attitudes towards appearance in this population.