Objective: To adapt the Child Food Neophobia Scale (CFNS) cross-culturally for use among 12-36-month-old Chinese toddlers and to perform a preliminary assessment of its construct validity and reliability.
Background: Food neophobia is the fear of eating new or unfamiliar foods, which affects the type and quality of individual dietary intake, especially during early childhood. However, measurements of child food neophobia have rarely been reported in China due to a lack of reliable and valid measurements.
Methods: The CFNS was translated and adapted into a Chinese version (CFNS-CN) through a forward translation, reconciliation, a back translation, expert review and pretesting. The construct validity and reliability of the CFNS-CN were tested in 390 caregivers of 12-36 months old Chinese toddlers through convenience sampling in Changsha Maternal and Child Health Care Hospital, Hunan Province, China. The internal consistency, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and reliability were estimated.
Results: The kappa coefficients indicated moderate to perfect agreement between the test and retest, and Cronbach's α coefficient was 0.91. A normal χ2/df, CMIN/DF=3.302, Comparative Fit Index, CFI=0.993, Tucker-Lewis Index, TLI=0.986 and root mean square error of approximation, RMSEA=0.077 were found. The CFA results showed that the model indicators were acceptable. High food neophobia was observed in 25.1% of individuals.
Conclusion: The CFNS-CN showed good internal consistency reliability and construct validity. The CFNS-CN may become an effective tool for assessing food neophobia in Chinese toddlers.
Trial registration: This trial was pre-registered at the China Clinical Trial Registration Center under registration number ChiCTR1800015890.
Keywords: china; construct validity; food neophobia scale; reliability; toddlers.
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