Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Aug 9;16(8):e0235182.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0235182. eCollection 2021.

Systematic review of instruments for assessing culinary skills in adults: What is the quality of their psychometric properties?

Aline Rissatto Teixeira  1 , Daniela Bicalho  1 , Betzabeth Slater  1 , Tacio de Mendonça Lima  2
Affiliations

Systematic review of instruments for assessing culinary skills in adults: What is the quality of their psychometric properties?

Aline Rissatto Teixeira et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: Culinary skills are important objects of study in the field of Public Health. Studies that propose to develop instruments for assessing such construct show lack of methodological uniformity to report validity and reliability of their instruments.

Objective: To identify studies that have developed instruments to measure culinary skills in adult population, and critically assess their psychometric properties.

Design: We conducted a systematic review according to the PRISMA statement. We searched literature PubMed/Medline, Scopus, LILACS, and Web of Science databases until January 2021, and consulted Google Scholar for relevant grey literature. Two reviewers independently selected the studies, conducted data extraction, and assessed the psychometric quality of the instruments. A third reviewer resolved any doubts or disagreements in all steps of the systematic review.

Results: The search identified 1148 potentially relevant studies, out of which 9 met the inclusion criteria. In addition, we included 3 studies by searching the related articles and the reference lists of these studies, totaling 12 included studies in this review. Ten studies reported the development of tools measuring culinary skills in adults and 2 studies performed cross-cultural adaptations of original instruments. We considered adequate quality of internal consistency reliability in four studies. One study received adequate rating for test-retest reliability. No studies presented adequate rating for content validity and four studies showed satisfactory results for at least one type of construct validity. One study reported criterion validity and the quality of this psychometric property was inadequate.

Conclusions: We identified many studies that surveyed culinary skills. Although the isolated measures appraised in this review show good promise in terms of quality of psychometric properties, no studies presented adequate measures for each aspect of reliability and validity. A more consistent and consensual definition of culinary skills is recommended. The flaws observed in these studies show that there is a need for ongoing research in the area of the psychometric properties of instruments assessing culinary skills.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Study selection flowchart of literature search.
Abbreviations LILACS: Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Lavelle F, McGowan L, Spence M et al.. Barriers and facilitators to cooking from ’scratch’ using basic or raw ingredients: A qualitative interview study. Appetite. 2016; 107, 383–91. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2016.08.115 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Foley W, Spurr S, Lenoy L. De Jong M, Fichera R. Cooking skills are important competencies for promoting healthy eating in an urban Indigenous health service. Nutrition & Dietetics. 201168 (4), 291–6. doi: 10.1111/j.1747-0080.2011.01551.x - DOI
    1. Jomori MM, Vasconcelos FDAGD, Bernardo GL, Uggioni PL, Proença RPC. The concept of cooking skills: A review with contributions to the scientific debate. Rev Nutr. 2018; 31 (1), 119–135. doi: 10.1590/1678-98652018000100010 - DOI
    1. Metcalfe J, Fiese B, Liu R, Emberton E, McCaffrey J. Innovative approaches to the evaluation of hands-on cooking skills with youth. J Nutr Educ Behav. 2018; 50(7), Suppl 7, S6. doi: 10.1016/j.jneb.2018.04.026 - DOI
    1. Melo EA, Jaime PC, Monteiro CA. Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian population. 150 p. Brasília: Ministry of Health of Brazil. Secretariat of Health Care. Primary Health Care Department; 2015.

Publication types

MeSH terms