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Validation of Instruments to Assess Home Food Environment of Pre‐adolescents: A Pilot Study
Author(s) -
Nepper Martha,
Ludemann McKena,
Chai Weiwen
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.29.1_supplement.132.1
Subject(s) - cronbach's alpha , medicine , internal consistency , test (biology) , reliability (semiconductor) , kappa , environmental health , physical therapy , psychology , clinical psychology , psychometrics , philosophy , paleontology , power (physics) , physics , quantum mechanics , biology , linguistics
Objective To validate a Home Food Assessment tool (HFA) to evaluate the availability, visibility and accessibility of actual home foods and a 30‐day Home Food Environment Survey (HFES) to assess the foods regularly present in the homes of pre‐adolescents. Methods Thirteen pairs of parents and their children (9 to 12 years) participated in the study. The HFA was completed by the research staff and parents independently for criterion validity. Kappa statistics was used to compare parent and staff reports. Parents also completed HFES during the home visit and one week after for test/retest reliability. Cronbach's alpha was used to test the internal consistency of the instruments. Results Of the 23 healthy and unhealthy items from HFA, moderate to outstanding agreement (0.41 – 1.00) between research staff and parents was observed on 21, 14, and 18 items for availability, visibility, and accessibility, respectively. Agreement levels for items of fresh fruits and vegetables ranged from moderate to outstanding (0.41‐1.00), with the exception of four items. Internal consistency for 12 healthy food, 11 unhealthy food, 18 fresh fruit, and 14 fresh vegetable items were 0.94, 0.91, 0.90, and 0.87, respectively. For HFES, test and retest scores were significantly correlated except for two reduced‐fat items. The total scores of the available healthy (r=0.87, P =0.0001) or unhealthy items (r=0.85, P=0.0005) from the HFA were positively correlated to those from HFES. Conclusion Our results demonstrated that HFA and HFES are participant‐friendly, reliable and valid instruments to assess the home food environment of pre‐adolescents. These two instruments complement each other and are useful for future research in exploring the relationship between home food environment and weight status of pre‐adolescents.