Abstract

Background:

Nutrition programs often focus on the development of nutrition knowledge to influence dietary habits and behaviours. Determining the effectiveness of nutrition interventions requires a measurement of change in knowledge, most commonly assessed by a questionnair. Despite changes in national nutrition recommendations, public health nutrition guidelines and food availability, a review of the literature has indicated a lack of current, validated nutrition knowledge questionnaires for Australia since 2008. This study aimed to measure construct validity and test-retest reliability of a nutrition knowledge questionnaire in an Australian university sample.

Methods:

Ninety-three undergraduate nutrition and engineering students at Queensland University of Technology completed an online nutrition knowledge questionnaire to measure construct validity. Nineteen students were contacted a week later for test-retest reliability.

Results:

Nutrition students scored consistently higher in each section and for the questionnaire overall (M=100.53, SD=7.82) compared to engineering students (M=80.13, SD=10.17), t(91)=10.86, p=<0.001). Internal reliability of the questionnaire was high (a=0.92) as was test-retest reliability (r=0.98, ICC 2,1=0.99).

Conclusions:

The AUS-R NKQ is valid and would be an appropriate questionnaire for assessing the effectiveness of public health nutrition interventions within a university setting.

Thompson, C., Vidgen, H. A., Gallegos, D., & Hannan-Jones, M. (2020, May 01). Validity of a nutrition knowledge questionnaire (AUS-R NKQ) in Australian university students. In World Public Health Nutrition Congress.