Development and validation of a food and nutrition literacy questionnaire for Chinese school-age children

Abstract Background : This study aimed to develop and validate a Food and Nutrition Literacy Questionnaire for Chinese School-age Children (FNLQ-SC). Methods : A comprehensive literature review and a qualitative study were initially performed to identify food and nutrition literacy dimensions and core components. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in 4359 school-age children, and the junior middle school students were used to analyze the reliability and validity (n=2452). The reliability of the questionnaire was determined by internal consistency. The construct validity was assessed by exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and the content validity was assessed by Pearson correlation coefficient. Results : By literature review and qualitative methods, 19 core components of FNLQ-SC were developed, including five dimensions of food and nutrition knowledge, the ability of access, selection, preparing of food and healthy eating. The overall FNLQ-SC questionnaire had high internal consistency (Cronbach’s α = 0.698). The exploratory factor analysis of skill components extracted 5 factors which were included in the conceptual framework, but a little different model, and cumulative contribution of variance accounted to 50.60％. The commonality was more than 0.20 for all components. The Pearson correlation coefficients between dimensions and total questionnaire were from 0.370 to 0.877. For all 4395 students, the average FNLQ-SC score of all participants was 61.91 ± 9.22, the score of knowledge and understanding was higher than that of skill dimensions. Multiple linear regression analysis indicated not only the social demographic characteristics (girls, only child, non-resident in school, urban registered permanent residence, in a more affluent family, and cared by their parents/grandparents with a higher education level), but also the home food environment were the predictors of food and nutrition literacy in school-age children (R 2 =0.226, F =81.401, P <0.05). Conclusion : The developed Food and Nutrition Literacy Questionnaire (FNLQ-SC) had good reliability, and it could potentially be a useful instrument for assessing food and nutrition literacy for Chinese school-age children.