Evaluation of Research Quality in Systematic Reviews Specific to Exercise and Sport Sciences: Adapting TESTEX Criteria to Turkish

Abstract

This study aims to adapt the TESTEX scale, which is preferred by researchers who make systematic reviews in the field of exercise and sports, into Turkish in a valid and reliable way. The study was carried out according to the observational research design, which is one of the quantitative research methods, and the study group consisted of five independent language experts and five researchers. The following procedures were carried out for the adaptation of the TESTEX scale to Turkish: (i) Consistency among independent language experts, (ii) Content validity of the TESTEX scale, (iii) Language validity of the TESTEX scale, (iv) Inter-rater reliability, (v) Inter-rater consistency. For statistical analysis of these procedures, Kendall-W agreement coefficient, content validity ratio, content validity index (CVI), Pearson correlation coefficient (r), Fisher'z effect size index (z), intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC), and Bland Altman analyses were carried out. Study results showed that the TESTEX scale was adapted to Turkish as valid and reliable. In conclusion, the Turkish version of the TESTEX scale may be preferred to evaluate the methodological quality of research articles in systematic reviews. In addition, researchers can benefit from the quality criteria in the scale to improve the methodological quality of their studies.