Development and Validation of the Young Adult Nutrition Literacy Tool

Abstract

Objective: To create a tool to measure college students' functional, interactive, and critical nutrition literacy.

Design: (1) Focus group: item generation, (2) expert review, (3) exploratory factor structure analysis, (4) item refinement and modification, (5) factor structure validation, and (6) criterion validation.

Setting: Two land-grant college campuses.

Participants: College students aged between 18 and 24 years.

Main outcome measures: Survey data was used to assess nutrition literacy.

Analysis: Exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), item response theory (IRT) analyses, and correlations.

Results: One-hundred and twenty-three items were generated and tested in an online survey format. Items were eliminated on the basis of face validity, expert feedback, exploratory factor analysis, and CFA/IRT. The 3 measures (functional, interactive, and critical) were analyzed separately. All 3 measures showed reasonable model fit in the CFA/IRT models. Criterion validity showed small to medium effect sizes between measures and fruit/vegetable intake. Reliability estimates met reasonable standards for each measure.

Conclusions and implications: The Young Adult Nutrition Literacy Tool is a novel instrument that measures all 3 domains of nutrition literacy. Strengths include a rigorous 6-step development process, reasonable psychometric properties, and a large breadth of items.

Keywords: health behavior; nutrition literacy; survey methodology; young adult.