Development of an Objective Food Literacy Assessment Tool for Young Adults

Background Young adulthood is a time for development of food skills, and most young adults are not meeting dietary recommendations. The emerging field of food literacy builds upon the concepts of nutrition and health literacy. Currently there is a need for a tool that objectively measures food literacy. Objective To develop a valid tool that can be used to quantify food literacy in young adults. Study Design, Settings, Participants Nine experts with experience developing food skills in adolescents or young adults completed semi-structured interviews about the important knowledge and skills young adults need to achieve food literacy according to the 4 domains defined by Vidgen (Plan & Manage, Select, Prepare, and Eat). Expert insight and published literature were used to develop a 62-item draft of the tool (50 multiple choice objective and 12 scaled subjective questions). Pilot testing of the draft tool was completed with 21 young adults (ages 18-27), including 3 culinary student controls. Measurable Outcome/Analysis Experts reviewed the draft tool and provided feedback for each question including clarity, relevance, and if the question should remain or be deleted. Relevance rankings were used to calculate Scale Content Validity Index (S-CVI). The percentage of non-culinary and culinary students who answered correctly was compared for each question. Expert ratings and comments as well as percentages of item difficulty of culinary and non-culinary student answers were used to inform revisions. Results Culinary students scored an average of 98% and non-culinary students scored an average of 84% on the objective questions. Fifteen questions were revised, 13 questions were deleted, and 1 question was added creating a 50-item version of the tool. SCV-I of remaining questions was 0.96. Conclusion A content valid food literacy assessment tool for young adults was produced that can proceed to construct validation and reliability testing. Funding None Young adulthood is a time for development of food skills, and most young adults are not meeting dietary recommendations. The emerging field of food literacy builds upon the concepts of nutrition and health literacy. Currently there is a need for a tool that objectively measures food literacy. To develop a valid tool that can be used to quantify food literacy in young adults. Nine experts with experience developing food skills in adolescents or young adults completed semi-structured interviews about the important knowledge and skills young adults need to achieve food literacy according to the 4 domains defined by Vidgen (Plan & Manage, Select, Prepare, and Eat). Expert insight and published literature were used to develop a 62-item draft of the tool (50 multiple choice objective and 12 scaled subjective questions). Pilot testing of the draft tool was completed with 21 young adults (ages 18-27), including 3 culinary student controls. Experts reviewed the draft tool and provided feedback for each question including clarity, relevance, and if the question should remain or be deleted. Relevance rankings were used to calculate Scale Content Validity Index (S-CVI). The percentage of non-culinary and culinary students who answered correctly was compared for each question. Expert ratings and comments as well as percentages of item difficulty of culinary and non-culinary student answers were used to inform revisions. Culinary students scored an average of 98% and non-culinary students scored an average of 84% on the objective questions. Fifteen questions were revised, 13 questions were deleted, and 1 question was added creating a 50-item version of the tool. SCV-I of remaining questions was 0.96. A content valid food literacy assessment tool for young adults was produced that can proceed to construct validation and reliability testing.