Abstract

LERA, Lydia; SALINAS, Judith; FRETES, Gabriela  and  VIO, Fernando. Validation of an instrument to measure food practices in chilean families of school children aged 4-7 years. Nutr. Hosp. [online]. 2013, vol.28, n.6, pp.1961-1970. ISSN 1699-5198.  https://dx.doi.org/10.3305/nh.2013.28.6.6859.

Introduction: It is necessary to assess family food habits in school children to cope with infant obesity. Objective: Designing and validation of an instrument to measure food habits and food knowledge in Chilean preschool and school families based on dietary guidelines. Methods: A study in 30 preschool and school-age parents was carried-out. A questionnaire to measure food habits and food knowledge in parents was elaborated by researchers considering an expert group opinion. This questionnaire was applied twice with a 15 days interval, evaluating temporal stability, internal consistency and inter-personal agreement. Afterwards, the questionnaire was applied to 59 parents calculating the internal consistency of the instrument. Results: The questionnaire had 55 questions in 4 sections. The instrument had questions about food and nutrition information about the families. A good interpersonal agreement resulted for almost all the questions about food and nutrition information (0.5-1.0). The correlation between the first and second test (test-retest) was high (0.6-1.0), as well as the internal consistency (0.75). In the section about frequency consumption in parents and children food consumption at home and school there was a high internal consistency for the two observers (0,85-0,92 and 0,87-0,90). Conclusions: The instrument is valid and useful to be utilized in preschool and school families intervened with nutrition education, and this methodology can be replied in other studies.

Keywords : Questionnaire; Validity; Family environment; Food habits.

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