Validation of Nutrition Literacy Questionnaire for High School Students

Background: Nutrition literacy is the individuals' motivation and ability to obtain, process, and understand nutrition information and the skills needed in order to make appropriate nutrition decisions. The present study was conducted to determine the validity and reliability of the Chongqing Middle School Nutrition Literacy Scale (CM-NLS). Methods: The CM-NLS questionnaire was translated into Farsi and then back-translated, and its face validity and quantitative and qualitative content validity were investigated in a descriptive-cross-sectional study. This review was conducted using the opinions of expert faculty members. Besides, the Persian version was tested in a sample of 400 students of the first grade of high school in Bandar Anzali city. For this purpose, two schools were randomly selected and sampled using census method. Cronbach's alpha test method was used to examine reliability, and confirmatory factor analysis was used to evaluate construct validity (RMSEA=0.062). Results: In checking face validity, changes were made in the questionnaire, and some items were removed in content validity evaluation by calculating content validity ratio (CVR) and content validity index (CVI). In reliability analysis, Cronbach's alpha coefficient was calculated as 0.74 for functional literacy, 0.82 for interactive literacy, and 0.84 for critical literacy. The results of confirmatory factor analysis showed a good fit to measure the construct validity. Conclusions: Based on the results obtained, the CM-NLS questionnaire with 33 items, is a valid and reliable tool and can be used to measure the nutrition literacy of high school students.