Construction of Nutrition Literacy Indicators for College Students in Taiwan: A Delphi Consensus Study

Abstract

Objective: To use the Delphi process to select nutrition literacy (NL) indicators for Taiwan college students.

Design: Initial formulation of 8 principal indicators and 77 subindicators, followed by a 2-round Delphi survey and final selection of indicators.

Participants: A total of 28 nutrition experts selected through snowball sampling; 100% response rate.

Main outcome measures: An expert panel scored and ranked NL themes and indicators for relevance, representativeness, and importance.

Analysis: Quantitative analysis. For principal indicators, the defined cutoff was mean (relevance and representativeness) > 4 and SD < 1. For subindicators, screening criteria were: (1) >20 experts ranked the nutrition theme's importance in the top 50% of the 12 themes; (2) mean (relevance and representativeness) > 4 and SD < 1 and >20 experts ranked the indicator's importance in the top 50% of all indicators within a domain.

Results: Consensus was reached on 8 principal indicators and 28 subindicators in 8 themes, including 10 in understand, 8 in analyze, 5 in appraise, and 5 in apply.

Conclusions and implications: An initial set of NL indicators was developed for Taiwan college students, serving as a basis to develop Taiwan College's Nutrition Literacy Scale and providing information on nutrition education.

Keywords: Delphi; Taiwan; college students; nutrition literacy.