Farsi Version of Visual Aesthetics of Website Inventory (FV-VisAWI): Translation and Psychometric Evaluation

Abstract

The Visual Aesthetic of Website Inventory (VisAWI) is the most commonly used self-report instrument for evaluating website aesthetics. However, at this time, there is no valid and reliable instrument in Farsi for Iranian users to evaluate website aesthetics. This study aimed to translate, validate, and evaluate the psychometric properties of a Farsi version of VisAWI. To do this, the cross-cultural adoption method was used in this study. First, the VisAWI was translated using forward-backward translation. Then, in order to evaluate scale validity, content and face validity were determined. The final version of a scale inventory with 12 items was given to 200 students to evaluate one of the most visited websites in Iran which is the first e-commerce website. The reliability of scale was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha and test-retest. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate the validity of scale. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.79 for this version. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the four-factor structure model was best fitted for the data. Our results showed the scaled psychometric Farsi version of VisAWI items tended to be valid and reliable for Iranian users.

Ethical approval

The study protocol was approved by the ethical committee of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (IR.SBMU.PHNS.REC.1398.109).

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank all the participants in the study. We would also like to thank the authors of the VisAWI for their permission to use and translate this questionnaire into a Farsi version.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mahnaz Saremi

Mahnaz Saremi is actually an Associate Professor at the School of Public Health and Safety, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. She holds a PhD in cognitive neuroscience and ergonomics from Louis Pasteur University, France (2007). Her research focuses mainly on Cognitive Ergonomics, HCI and relative evaluation methods.

Vahid Sadeghi

Vahid Sadeghi is a Master student in Ergonomics from the Department of Ergonomics, School of Public Health and Safety, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. He conducted his Master dissertation under direct supervision of Dr. Mahnaz Saremi.

Soheila Khodakarim

Soheila Khodakarim is an Associate Professor at the School of Medicine, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran. She holds a PhD in Biostatistics from Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (2012). Her research focuses mainly on the analysis of high-throughput, longitudinal & survival data and psychometrics questionnaire.

Azam Maleki-Ghahfarokhi

Azam Maleki-Ghahfarokhi is a PhD student in Ergonomics from the Department of Occupational Health and Ergonomics in Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.