Validity and Reliability Assessment of a Food and Physical Activity Questionnaire for Adolescents From Low-Income Communities.

Objective: Develop and validate an evaluation questionnaire for sixth-12th grade Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) participants.

Design: Five-step process: domain concept prioritization, question generation, question pretesting, reliability testing, and criterion validity testing.

Setting: Community sites in 4 states and New Jersey EFNEP secondary program data.

Participants: Nineteen sixth-12th graders were interviewed; secondary data included 164 ninth-12th graders.

Variables measured: Content, face, and criterion validity; internal reliability.

Analysis: Iterative template analysis to gauge conceptual understanding; exploratory factor analysis with orthogonal Varimax rotation, interitem correlations, and Cronbach α; Spearman correlations and Bland-Altman plots against the Physical Activity Questionnaire for Adolescents and Youth Risk Behavior Survey questions.

Results: Fourteen questions with acceptable face validity were developed. One item (handwashing) had a ceiling effect and was removed. Eleven of the remaining 13 items were loaded onto 4 factors. The remaining 2 items were kept because of conceptual relevance. The questionnaire demonstrated acceptable reliability and validity overall, but subscale Cronbach α values ranged from 0.53-0.75.

Conclusions and implications: This 13-item questionnaire was presented to national EFNEP program leaders and was implemented by EFNEP in October 2023. Further research could establish temporal reliability and gold standard criterion validity estimates with a multistate sample of sixth through 12th graders.