Developing the Persian Version of Yale Food Addiction Scale and Assessing Its Psychometric Properties

 Food addiction is a common mental disorder that can cause several problems in the physical health, psychological function and life quality. The aim of this study was to develop and validate the Persian version of Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) on people with food addiction.

 In this descriptive cross-sectional study, 98 people with food addiction referred to the Novin Food Center in Isfahan, Iran and 67 healthy people were participated in this study who were selected using convenience sampling technique from February to May 2018. Data collection tools were a demographic form and 25-item YFAS. Collected data were analyzed in AMOS v.18 and SPSS v.24.

 The results of confirmatory factor analysis showed that the model had a good fit and hence, the Persian YFAS had good construct validity. According to the results of ANOVA, there was a significant difference between the study groups in terms of the YFAS subscales (p>0.05). The coefficients of Cronbach’s alpha and Guttman split-half were higher than 0.7 in all subscales except for the withdrawal subscale.

 The Persian version of YFAS had good reliability and validity, and can be used in evaluating food addiction for clinical and research purposes.