The Reliability and Validity Study of the Chinese Child Feeding Questionnaire: Using Preschool Children as an Example

Chang, Pi-Chen

Wednesday, 1 August 2012: 9:10 AM

Pi-Chen Chang, PhD
College of Nursing, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan

Learning Objective 1: The development of an appropriate survey instrument to assess parental beliefs, attitudes, and practices regarding child feeding among preschool children.

Learning Objective 2: Using confirmatory factor analysis to test the validity and factor structure of the translated version of the Child Feeding Questinnaire.

Purpose: Childhood obesity is increasingly pervasive, with prevalence rates near doubling during the past two decades. The development of appropriate survey instruments to identify factors that may be related to childhood overweight is essential to more fully understand this phenomenon. The Child Feeding Questionnaire (CFQ) is a self-report measure to assess parental beliefs, attitudes, and practices regarding child feeding, with a concern on obesity proneness in children. The CFQ is designed for use with parents of children ranging in age from about 2 to 11 years of age. This study is to test the validity and factor structure of the translated version of the CFQ among parents of Taiwanese preschool children.

Methods: Confirmatory factor analysis was used to explore the validity of the translated CFQ to examine child feeding behaviors and attitudes in a sample of 451 parents of Taiwanese preschool children from schools in Hinchu and Taoyuan Counties. The structural equation modeling software Linear Structural Relationships (LISREL) was applied for the confirmatory factor analysis.

Results: The confirmatory factor analysis suggested that adding three error covariances constraint and dropping two items with a low factor loading. After these modifications, the 7-factor model displayed acceptable fit and most items loaded as expected. Internal consistencies for the seven factors were between 0.75 to 0.93.

Conclusion: Our study confirmed the validity and reliability of the translated CFQ to assess child feeding practices and attitudes among parents of Taiwanese preschool children.

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