Gizem Ayan, Bengü Doğu Kaya, Mehmet Buldur
Objective: To perform the cultural adaptation of the Health Literacy in Dentistry Scale-29 (HeLD-29) for Turkish adults and to evaluate its validity and reliability. Design: The Turkish version of the HeLD-29 was adapted through a forward-backward translation procedure consistent with the original 29-item, seven-subscale structure. The scale was first translated into Turkish by two independent translators and then back-translated into English by two different translators. The final analytical sample included 298 adults aged 19-70 years (117 females, 181 males). To assess temporal stability, 60 randomly selected participants completed the scale again after 7-10 days. Results: Test-retest reliability demonstrated excellent agreement using the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC = 0.912; p < 0.001). The Spearman rank-order correlation also indicated very strong temporal stability (r = 0.920; p < 0.001). After excluding two outliers, EFA revealed adequate communalities (0.546-0.894) and supported the multidimensional structure, with the final 26-item version explaining 78.07% of the total variance. Internal consistency was high across subscales (α = 0.84-0.93) and for the total scale (α = 0.936), and split-half coefficients further confirmed strong reliability. CFA verified the validity of the multidimensional construct, demonstrating acceptable model fit after minor modifications (RMSEA = 0.063; GFI = 0.900; AGFI = 0.850; CFI = 0.943; χ2 = 606.465; p < 0.001). Conclusion: The Turkish version of the HeLD-29 was demonstrated to be a reliable and valid instrument for assessing oral health literacy in Turkish adults.