Translation, cross-cultural adaptation, and reliability, of the Italian version of the Passive Risk Taking (PRT) Scale

The concept of “passive risk taking”, which refers to the risk brought on or magnified by inaction, has recently appeared in the literature on risk taking. Keinan and Bereby-Meyer (2012) have developed a scale to measure the personal tendency for passive risk taking (PRT); the scale has criterion validity and high test-retest reliability; it correlates with reported passive risk taking in everyday life and with the DOSPERT scale. Furthermore, it presents divergent validity from classic risk-taking constructs such as sensation seeking, and convergent validity with procrastination and avoidance. In this paper we propose a validation of the PRT scale in Italian. We performed the linguistic adaptation to Italian via the five steps suggested by Guillemin and colleagues (1993) and Beaton and colleagues (2000); we then submitted the derived questionnaire to a 297- adult sample. Results show that two out of three factors from the original scale were confirmed. However the third factor, originally composed of 6 items, was not consistent. We present the scale derived from such results, and discuss the differences with the original scale