Self-Disgust Scale-Revised: Turkish adaptation, validity and reliability

Objective: Self-disgust is experienced toward one's own behavioral, physical appearance or personality. Recent studies have emphasized the role of self-directed disgust in the development of several emotional and behavioral problems, especially depression. Self-disgust is also considered an important concept having potential to high-light not only many clinical but also social mechanisms. Therefore, the aim of the current study was to translate Self-Disgust Scale Revised that is a self-report tool assessing the level of self-directed disgust, into Turkish and to examine its psychometric properties. Method: The study was carried out with 382 volunteer undergraduate students (310 females and 72 males) between the ages 18 and 29. In addition to Self-Disgust Scale Revised, Beck Depression Inventory, Positive and Negative Affect Scale, Psychological Well-Being Scale, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and Disgust Scale (Revised) were administered during data collection. Results: The result of the explanatory factor analysis supported the original factor structure indicating that the general self-disgust consisted two dimensions, named as, behavioral and physical appearance based disgust. The reliability analyses also revealed that total scale and the subscales of behavioral and appearance self-disgust had high internal consistency and test-retest reliability. Additionally, the divergent and convergent validity of the scale were confirmed with the correlation between the scale and the other variables in the study. The results also indicated that self-disgust differed from general disgust sensitivity. Discussion: The overall findings of the study revealed that, Turkish version of the Self-Disgust Scale-Revised was an instrument to assess self-directed disgust with satisfactory reliablity and validity values.