How do young children eat after an obesity intervention? Validation of the Child Eating Behaviour Questionnaire using the Rasch Model in diverse samples from Australia and Sweden

The Night Eating Questionnaire through the lens of the Rasch model

Previous research focused on the conventional approaches to test psychometric characteristics of the Night Eating Questionnaire (NEQ). The purpose of this research was to examine the psychometric properties of the Night Eating Questionnaire using the Rasch model in a sample of university students. The study was carried out from November 2018 to March 2019 on 300 students in health sciences at the University of Pristina temporarily seated in Kosovska Mitrovica, who completed the NEQ. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) suggested that the Serbian version mirrored the original NEQ structure: Goodness of fit index = 0.978, Comparative fit index = 0.996, Tucker-Lewis index = 0.995, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation = 0.011 and Standardized Root Mean Square Residual = 0.057. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the total scale was 0.627. The Rasch analysis showed that the item separation index classified the items into six groups based on their level of difficulty. The person reliability index separated well night eaters from day eaters. Few items did not fit the adequate range for the infit/outfit statistics. Overall, there were several groups of NEQ items that have a distinctive difficulty level, but the difference was not a remarkable one. This means that most students did not have night eating syndrome (NES), despite various levels of item difficulty. The NEQ performs well in the efforts to distinguish people who eat and do not eat at night. Most students reported conventional eating patterns and only a few had NES. The properties of the NEQ warrant its use in further night eating research.

Development, validation and item reduction of a food literacy questionnaire (IFLQ-19) with Australian adults

Background

Food literacy is theorised to improve diet quality, nutrition behaviours, social connectedness and food security. The definition and conceptualisation by Vidgen & Gallegos, consisting of 11 theoretical components within the four domains of planning and managing, selecting, preparing and eating, is currently the most highly cited framework. However, a valid and reliable questionnaire is needed to comprehensively measure this conceptualisation. Therefore, this study draws on existing item pools to develop a comprehensive food literacy questionnaire using item response theory.

Methods

Five hundred Australian adults were recruited in Study 1 to refine a food literacy item pool using principal component analysis (PCA) and item response theory (IRT) which involved detailed item analysis on targeting, responsiveness, validity and reliability. Another 500 participants were recruited in Study 2 to replicate item analysis on validity and reliability on the refined item pool, and 250 of these participants re-completed the food literacy questionnaire to determine its test–retest reliability.

Results

The PCA saw the 171-item pool reduced to 100-items across 19 statistical components of food literacy. After the thresholds of 26 items were combined, responses to the food literacy questionnaire had ordered thresholds (targeting), acceptable item locations (< -0.01 to + 1.53) and appropriateness of the measurement model (n = 92% expected responses) (responsiveness), met outfit mean-squares MSQ (0.48—1.42) (validity) and had high person, item separation (> 0.99) and test–retest (ICC 2,1 0.55–0.88) scores (reliability).

Conclusions

We developed a 100-item food literacy questionnaire, the IFLQ-19 to comprehensively address the Vidgen & Gallegos theoretical domains and components with good targeting, responsiveness, reliability and validity in a diverse sample of Australian adults.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12966-022-01351-8.

Can children report on their own picky eating? Similarities and differences with parent report

Picky eating in childhood is associated with children's dietary outcomes and parental feeding experiences. The Child Eating Behavior Questionnaire (CEBQ) is a frequently-used parent-report survey that measures children's eating behaviors, including picky eating. Limited work has adapted the CEBQ into a child-friendly format to measure children's ability to report directly on their own picky eating behavior. We sought to extend previous research by adapting the Food Fussiness subscale of the CEBQ into a child self-report format and measuring parent-child resemblance in scores, with children as young as 3 years. Our final sample included 3- to 10-year-old children (n = 95) and their parents, who were assessed at a local children's museum. The internal consistency of parent-report on the CEBQ FF was α = 0.9 and child-report was α = 0.7, with parent scores predicting child scores when controlling for child age and child gender. The largest difference between parent and child scores on child picky eating (with parents reporting higher scores) was for 3- to 4-year-old children. Children are able to report on their own picky eating and with age their reports converge with those of their parents, highlighting the potential benefit of collecting picky eating scores from multiple informants (parent and child). We suggest future directions for the validation and extension of this measure.