Abstract
BackgroundThis study aimed to determine the validity of the Malay-translated version scales for assessing the social support and physical environment for exercise activities.MethodThe study was a cross-sectional design in nature, using self-reported questionnaires among the university students in Malaysia. Participants were selected using a convenience sampling approach. Perceptions regarding social support and physical environment were assessed using the Malay-translated version scales. The standard forward-backwards translation was conducted to translate the English version of the scales to the Malay version. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to validate the translated version scales; composite reliability (CR) and average variance extracted (AVE) were computed.ResultsA total of 857 students participated in this study (female: 49.1%, male: 50.9%). The mean age of the participants was 20.2 (SD = 1.6). The fit indices of the initial hypothesized measurement models (social support and physical environment) were not satisfactory. Further improvements were made by adding covariances between residuals' items within the same factor for each hypothesized model. The final re-specified measurement models demonstrated adequate factor structure for the social support scale with 24 items (CFI = .932, TLI = .920, SRMR = .054, RMSEA = .061), and the physical environment scale with five items (CFI = .994, TLI = .981, SRMR = .013, RMSEA = .054). The CR was .918 for family support, .919 for friend support, .813 for perceived availability, and .771 for perceived quality. The AVEs were .560 for family support, .547 for friend support, .554 for perceived availability, and .628 for perceived quality. The intra-class correlation (ICC) based on test-retest was .920 for family support, .984 for friend support, .895 for availability of facilities, and .774 for quality of facilities.ConclusionThe Malay version of the social support scale for exercise and the physical environment scale for physical activity were shown to have adequate psychometric properties for assessing perceived social support and physical environment among the university students in Malaysia.PerspectiveThis study presented the psychometric properties of the social support and physical environment scales based on CFA and was the first to translate these scales from the original English version to the Malay version.
Highlights
Physical activity is considered one of the essential components that promote healthy living [1]
This study presented the psychometric properties of the social support and physical environment scales based on Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and was the first to translate these scales from the original English version to the Malay version
Because residual covariances were added for both the social support and physical environment models and previous studies [23,24,25, 27] reported only Cronbach’s alpha, we reported the composite reliability (CR) and the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient
Summary
Physical activity is considered one of the essential components that promote healthy living [1]. Some studies reported that about 36% of Malaysian adults were physically inactive [4, 5]. Physical inactivity accounted for 9% of deaths in 2008 [6], whereas sedentary behavior accounted for 3.8% of deaths from 2002 to 2011 [7]. These were reported to be major risk factors that promote noncommunicable diseases [8]. This study aimed to determine the validity of the Malay-translated version scales for assessing the social support and physical environment for exercise activities
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