Background – The labelled magnitude scale (LMS) has been found to provide better discrimination of satiety 1
sensations compared to other scales for a homogenous population . Verbal anchors were placed on the scale to represent numerical ratios of perceived satiety. The satiety perception in a diverse population such as Australia may produce differences in the numerical ratios due to language acquisition and diversity.
Objective – To investigate whether LMS is an appropriate methodology to assess satiety in a diverse population. Design – Forty three subjects (28 female, 15 male) took part in the study. Of this group, 44% had English as their first language (EFL) while 56% had other language as first language (EOL). Subjects quantified the semantic meaning of 47 English words denoting hunger/fullness at various intensities. Ambiguous words were removed and geometric means (GM) were calculated. Eleven final words were chosen for anchors for scale construction. Outcomes – Words removed due to ambiguity differed between EFL and EOL groups as these words have no equivalent in non-English first languages e.g. ravenous and voracious. An asymmetrical scale was constructed. The scale developed for this diverse population had some differences in magnitude of numerical ratios of words such as
1 extremely full/hungry and very full/hungry compared to previous study .
Conclusions – Provided ambiguous words are avoided, labelled magnitude scale can be used in English to assess satiety in populations differing in their first language.
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