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Reliable, Valid Questionnaires in JNEB Collections
From JNEB Reliable, Valid Questionnaires in JNEB Collections Beginning any new research or educational program involves lots of formative work. One area that I both love and hate is the evaluation component. I love evaluation because it is the heart and soul of a project. I hate evaluation because developing the right evaluation tool can add months to a student's project. I was recently searching for a valid, reliable questionnaire about vegetable intake and attitudes. I had thought with all the research in the obesity area that we could find 2 or 3 to start our work. However, this was not so easy. I ended up searching through www.jneb.org for both a vegetable questionnaire and reliability. As I was doing so, I thought, JNEB needs to have these more easily available. And now they are there! Just go to www. jneb.org and click on the Collections tab. Choose ‘‘Survey Validation’’. There you will find many valid, reliable questionnaires to use with children. The most recent covers both nutrition and physical activity (KAN-Q) and was designed for fourth to eighth graders. The 18 questions include 7 nutrition and 6 physical activity behaviors, as well as 1 physical activity knowledge and 4 nutrition questions.1 There are also many valid, reliable questionnaires to use with adults. Perhaps the most useful in terms of general use is the Nutrition Knowledge questionnaire by Jones et al.2 Although developed for adults in California, this might be useful in other states as well. Originally developed using MyPyramid, MyPlate can be used for all but 2 of the nutrition questions with no change in wording. The questionnaire includes the domains of Familiarity with MyPyramid, Nutrient Content of Foods, and Diet–Disease Relationships.2 The third category of questionnaires on the collections site is those
questionnaires addressing the nutrition environment. While some of these are some variation on the Nutrition Environment Measurement Surveys (NEMS),3,4 others include variations on how to evaluate groceries. One of these by Kerr et al5 evaluated the grocery store marketing and promotional efforts both within the store and outside. One review article evaluated measures of the retail food store environment, noting that there are 2 most often used: NEMS which had been used in 29 studies and the Thrifty Food Plan, which had been used in 11 studies.6 We hope to expand our categories of validated surveys to include those in languages other than English. Currently, you need to sort a bit to find these. For instance, the Child Feeding Questionnaire in Spanish7 is in the Surveys for Adults category and the NEMS-S for Brazil in the Environmental Surveys.3 It may seem easy to pull these out of the issues, but in fact no searching method is without flaws. Many of these identified were found while looking for something else. So, if you find a JNEB article that describes a validation and reliability process of a questionnaire, please send a note to me at [email protected]. Or if you find a JNEB article that is not entirely devoted to the validation process, but includes a validated questionnaire, let me know. Hopefully, this collection will decrease stress in the lives of researchers and program evaluators who need to use a valid and reliable survey. One final note, JNEB authors have been moving nutrition education and behavior science forward by publishing validation studies for a long time. We have also been publishing ‘‘how to develop questionnaire’’-type papers for a long time. The 1981 article by Talmage and Rasher8 describing validity and reliability issues were the earliest I could find, but I know review article of Contento et al9 also provides valuable guidelines within their analysis for how to development robust questionnaires.
Karen Chapman-Novakofski PhD, RD, LDN Editor-in-Chief
REFERENCES 1. LeGros TA, Hartz VL, Jacobs LE. Reliability of a Kid’s Activity and Nutrition Questionnaire for School-Based SNAPEd Interventions as Part of a Tiered Development Process. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2017;49:125-129. 2. Jones AM, Lamp C, Neelon M, Nicholson Y, Schneider C, Wooten Swanson P, Zidenberg-Cherr S. Reliability and validity of nutrition knowledge questionnaire for adults. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2015;47:69-74. 3. Martins PA, Cremm EC, Leite FH, Maron LR, Scagliusi FB, Oliveira MA. Validation of an adapted version of the nutrition environment measurement tool for stores (NEMS-S) in an urban area of Brazil. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2013;45: 785-792. 4. Lo BK, Minaker LM, Mah CL, Cook B. Development and testing of the Toronto Nutrition Environment Measures Survey-Store (ToNEMS-S). J Nutr Educ Behav. 2016;48:723-729. 5. Kerr J, Sallis JF, Bromby E, Glanz K. Assessing reliability and validity of the GroPromo audit tool for evaluation of grocery store marketing and promotional environments. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2012;44:597-603. 6. Glanz K, Johnson L, Yaroch AL, Phillips M, Ayala GX, Davis EL. Measures of retail food store environments and sales: review and implications for healthy eating initiatives. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2016;48:280-288. 7. Canals-Sans J, Blanco-G omez A, Luque V, Ferre N, Ferrando PJ, Gispert-Llaurad o M, Escribano J, Closa-Monasterolo R. Validation of the child feeding questionnaire in Spanish parents of schoolchildren. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2016;48:383-391. 8. Talmage H, Rasher SP. Validity and reliability issues in measurement instrumentation. J Nutr Educ Behav. 1981;13:83-85. 9. Contento IR, Randall JS, Bosch CE. Review and analysis of evaluation measures used in nutrition education research. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2002;34: 2-25.
questionnaires addressing the nutrition environment. While some of these are some variation on the Nutrition Environment Measurement Surveys (NEMS),3,4 others include variations on how to evaluate groceries. One of these by Kerr et al5 evaluated the grocery store marketing and promotional efforts both within the store and outside. One review article evaluated measures of the retail food store environment, noting that there are 2 most often used: NEMS which had been used in 29 studies and the Thrifty Food Plan, which had been used in 11 studies.6 We hope to expand our categories of validated surveys to include those in languages other than English. Currently, you need to sort a bit to find these. For instance, the Child Feeding Questionnaire in Spanish7 is in the Surveys for Adults category and the NEMS-S for Brazil in the Environmental Surveys.3 It may seem easy to pull these out of the issues, but in fact no searching method is without flaws. Many of these identified were found while looking for something else. So, if you find a JNEB article that describes a validation and reliability process of a questionnaire, please send a note to me at [email protected]. Or if you find a JNEB article that is not entirely devoted to the validation process, but includes a validated questionnaire, let me know. Hopefully, this collection will decrease stress in the lives of researchers and program evaluators who need to use a valid and reliable survey. One final note, JNEB authors have been moving nutrition education and behavior science forward by publishing validation studies for a long time. We have also been publishing ‘‘how to develop questionnaire’’-type papers for a long time. The 1981 article by Talmage and Rasher8 describing validity and reliability issues were the earliest I could find, but I know review article of Contento et al9 also provides valuable guidelines within their analysis for how to development robust questionnaires.
Karen Chapman-Novakofski PhD, RD, LDN Editor-in-Chief
REFERENCES 1. LeGros TA, Hartz VL, Jacobs LE. Reliability of a Kid’s Activity and Nutrition Questionnaire for School-Based SNAPEd Interventions as Part of a Tiered Development Process. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2017;49:125-129. 2. Jones AM, Lamp C, Neelon M, Nicholson Y, Schneider C, Wooten Swanson P, Zidenberg-Cherr S. Reliability and validity of nutrition knowledge questionnaire for adults. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2015;47:69-74. 3. Martins PA, Cremm EC, Leite FH, Maron LR, Scagliusi FB, Oliveira MA. Validation of an adapted version of the nutrition environment measurement tool for stores (NEMS-S) in an urban area of Brazil. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2013;45: 785-792. 4. Lo BK, Minaker LM, Mah CL, Cook B. Development and testing of the Toronto Nutrition Environment Measures Survey-Store (ToNEMS-S). J Nutr Educ Behav. 2016;48:723-729. 5. Kerr J, Sallis JF, Bromby E, Glanz K. Assessing reliability and validity of the GroPromo audit tool for evaluation of grocery store marketing and promotional environments. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2012;44:597-603. 6. Glanz K, Johnson L, Yaroch AL, Phillips M, Ayala GX, Davis EL. Measures of retail food store environments and sales: review and implications for healthy eating initiatives. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2016;48:280-288. 7. Canals-Sans J, Blanco-G omez A, Luque V, Ferre N, Ferrando PJ, Gispert-Llaurad o M, Escribano J, Closa-Monasterolo R. Validation of the child feeding questionnaire in Spanish parents of schoolchildren. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2016;48:383-391. 8. Talmage H, Rasher SP. Validity and reliability issues in measurement instrumentation. J Nutr Educ Behav. 1981;13:83-85. 9. Contento IR, Randall JS, Bosch CE. Review and analysis of evaluation measures used in nutrition education research. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2002;34: 2-25.