Validation of the Short Food Literacy Questionnaire in the Representative Sample of Polish Internet Users

Urszula Zwierczyk; Mateusz Kobryn; Mariusz Duplaga

doi:10.3390/ijerph19159710

Validation of the Short Food Literacy Questionnaire in the Representative Sample of Polish Internet Users

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Aug 6;19(15):9710. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19159710.

Authors

Urszula Zwierczyk¹, Mateusz Kobryn¹, Mariusz Duplaga¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Health Promotion and E-Health, Institute of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, Jagiellonian University Medical College, 31-066 Kraków, Poland.

Abstract

Analogous to health literacy, food literacy can be defined as a set of cognitive and social skills associated with the ability to acquire and understand information about food and nutrition to make appropriate nutritional decisions. In the literature, several terms such as food, nutrition, or nutritional literacy are used in parallel, differing in some aspects of their meaning. Food literacy is an important measure of the effectiveness of nutritional education interventions and appropriate instruments for its measurement should be available in every society. The aim of this study was the assessment of the validity and testing of a proposed model of the Short Food Literacy Questionnaire (SFLQ) culturally adapted into Polish. The analysis was performed on data from an online survey in a representative sample of 1286 adult internet users. Exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory factor (CFA) analyses were performed on two different subsets obtained through random splitting of the initial dataset. The Polish version of the SFLQ had good internal consistency (Cronbach's α 0.841; Guttman split-half coefficient was 0.812). The EFA revealed that the tool had a three-factor latent structure. The distinguished dimensions were 'information accessing', 'knowledge', and 'information appraisal'. The subscales also showed acceptable internal consistency based on the values of the Cronbach's α coefficients (ranging from 0.768 to 0.845). The CFA confirmed a good fit of the three-factor model with at least five indexes achieving acceptable levels (CFI = 0.972, GFI = 0.963, AGFI = 0.940, NFI = 0.959, and RMSEA = 0.059). The validation of the Polish version of the SFLQ revealed, contrary to earlier reports, not a single but a three-factor structure of the instrument. The SFLQ will be an important tool for the assessment of the effectiveness of educational interventions and population studies analyzing the determinants of food literacy in Poland.

Keywords: confirmatory factor analysis; exploratory factor analysis; food literacy; health literacy; nutritional habits; short food literacy questionnaire; validation.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Health Literacy*
Internet
Poland
Psychometrics
Reproducibility of Results
Surveys and Questionnaires

Grants and funding

This research and APC were funded by the Jagiellonian University Medical College within the project titled “Modern health promotion strategies focused on the change of health behaviors and the development of health literacy” carried out in the program “Minigrants for research activities for teams within the area POB qLIFE” (grant number U1C/P04/NO/02.13). Publication of this article was funded by the Priority Research Area qLife under the program “Excellence Initiative—Research University” at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (06/IDUB/2019/94).