# Development of the Canadian Eating Practices Screener for Adolescents to assess eating practices based on Canada’s Food Guide 2019 recommendations

## TL;DR

Researchers created a questionnaire to assess eating habits of Canadian adolescents based on the 2019 Food Guide recommendations.

## Contribution

Development of a new 11-item screener tailored for adolescents to evaluate eating practices aligned with Canada’s Food Guide 2019.

## Key findings

- An 11-item screener was developed after expert review and cognitive interviews with adolescents.
- The screener is designed for English- and French-speaking adolescents aged 10 to 17 years.
- Further validation for reliability and construct validity is needed before full implementation.

## Abstract

In addition to guidance on food choices, the Canada’s Food Guide 2019 (CFG-2019) provides recommendations to support healthy eating habits. A brief self-administered eating practices questionnaire informed by CFG-2019 recommendations was recently developed and validated among adults, but no such measure is available for adolescents. The objective of this study was to develop and assess the content validity of a self-administered screener to measure eating practices based on CFG-2019 recommendations among English- and French-speaking adolescents aged 10 to 17 years.

Following a literature review of existing measures and the identification of guiding principles for questionnaire development, a 26-item draft screener was created. The content validity of the draft screener was assessed by an expert panel with expertise in nutrition, eating behaviours, public health and/or questionnaire validation (English n = 13, French n = 7) and through two rounds of cognitive interviews with adolescents (English n = 18, French n = 13).

The number of items was reduced from 26 to 12 following review by the expert panel, and further reduced to 11 after the cognitive interviews with adolescents. Minor wording changes were made to improve clarity of a few items.

This study resulted in the development of the 11-item Canadian Eating Practices Screener for Adolescents/Questionnaire court canadien sur les pratiques alimentaires des adolescents designed for use among adolescents aged 10 to 17 years. Further work is needed to test the screener for construct validity and reliability. After which, this measure can be used for research and nutrition surveillance of eating practices among adolescents living in Canada.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12966-025-01853-1.