Validity and Reliability of the Turkish Version of the Mentalization Scale (MentS)

Objective: This study, aims to translate the Mentalization Scale (MentS) into Turkish and investigate the reliability and validity of the Turkish version.Method: The participants, consisting of 615 (310 female and 305 male) Turkish speaking adults, were asked to complete the MentS and the Emotional Intelligence Feature Scale-Short Form (EIFS) and the Borderline Personality Inventory (BPI).Results: The factor structure of the scale was investigated by exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Similar with the original scale, findings demonstrated a three-factor structure, namely, 'the self,' 'others' and 'motivation'. Corrected total score correlations for each item were between 0.28 and 0.52. The MentS score showed positive correlations with the EIFS score (r=0.49; p<0.001); and negative correlations with the BPI score (r=-0.37; p<0.001). Cronbach's alpha internal consistency coefficient was calculated as 0.84 for the total score, 0.78, 0.80, and 0.79 for MentS-S, MentS-O, and MentS-M, respectively.Conclusion: The findings show that the 25-item MentS Turkish form has sufficient psychometric properties. Our data supports the use of the Turkish version of MentS in future studies for assessment of mentalization capacity.