Development and Validation of Nutrition Literacy Questionnaire for Chinese Pre-School Children

TL;DR

This study created and tested a questionnaire to measure nutrition knowledge and habits in young Chinese children.

Contribution

A validated questionnaire for assessing nutrition literacy in Chinese pre-school children was developed.

Findings

The questionnaire has two knowledge dimensions and four practice dimensions.

The tool showed good reliability and validity in testing with 790 children.

Older children, girls, and those with well-educated parents had higher scores.

Abstract

Background: This study aims to develop and validate the Nutrition Literacy Questionnaire for Chinese Pre-school Children (NLQ-PSC). Methods: The reliability of the questionnaire was determined by internal consistency, the construct validity was assessed by exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and the content validity was assessed by the Pearson correlation coefficient. In order to analyze the application of NLQ-PSC, we conducted a cross-sectional study among 790 pre-school children. Results: From the literature review and qualitative methods, NLQ-PSC was developed, including two dimensions of knowledge and four practice dimensions. The NLQ-PSC questionnaire had good reliability and validity. The average NLQ-PSC score of all participants was 64.1 ± 11.0, and we found that older children, girls, and children who had well-educated parents presented higher nutrition literacy. Conclusions: NLQ-PSC has been validated and has shown good reliability and validity, and it could be considered a reliable tool to assess Chinese pre-school children.