The Validity and Reliability of the Turkish Version of theBrief Irritability Test

Abstract

Objective: Although irritability is a widely used term, it has no universal definition.Irritability is an emotional process that can be defined by a tendency to negative emo tional states. No Turkish scale has been developed or adapted to measure irritability inadults. Consequently, this paper aims to conduct a validity and reliability study of theTurkish version of the Brief Irritability Test (BITe) with 5 items, which was developed byHoltzman et al. in 2015 to measure irritability rapidly and appropriately. Methods: The Turkish BITe’s internal consistency and validity analysis were studied on136 volunteering undergraduate and postgraduate students. Cronbach’s alpha value wascalculated for internal consistency. Concurrent, convergent, discriminant validity analy ses, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were conducted to calculate structural validity.Moreover, the scale was applied to 24 people 2 weeks later to determine the temporalreliability of the Turkish BITe. Results: When the fit indices of the scale related to the CFA were examined, it wasobserved that it had a good fit (χ2=7.517, χ2 /df=1.503, df=5; RMSEA=0.061; CFI=0.992,GFI=0.977, NFI=0.976; TLI=0.984, IFI=0.992). In the reliability analysis, the Cronbach'salpha value was 0.86, and the correlation coefficient between test–retest scores was 0.74(P < .001). Conclusion: This study reveals that the Turkish form of the BITe shows sufficient psycho metric properties in the non-clinical population.