Development, validity, and reliability assessment of the Canadian Food Literacy Measure

Abstract

Food literacy is a growing area of interest given its potential to support healthy and sustainable diets. Most existing food literacy measures focus on nutrition and food skills but fail to address food systems and socio-environmental aspects of food literacy. Further, measures developed and tested in the Canadian context are lacking. The objective of this project was to develop and test the validity and reliability of a brief self-administered measure, in French and English, designed to assess multiple dimensions of food literacy among adults living in Canada. The 23-item Canadian Food Literacy Measure was developed through an iterative process that included assessment of face and content validity through expert review (n = 20) and cognitive interviews (n = 20) and construct validity and reliability, i.e., internal consistency through an online survey (n = 154). The results indicate that the measure is well understood by both English- and French-speaking adults. The measure's construct validity is demonstrated by the observed differences in total scores in hypothesized directions by gender (p = 0.003), age (p = 0.007), education level (p = 0.002), health literacy (p < 0.001) and smoking status (p = 0.001), and the significant positive correlation (r = 0.29; p = 0.002) between total scores and fruit and vegetable intake. The measure also has high internal consistency with a Cronbach's coefficient alpha of 0.80. This measure can be used in surveillance studies to provide insight into the food literacy of adults living in Canada and in epidemiologic research that aims to explore how food literacy is associated with a variety of health outcomes.

Keywords: cognitive interviews; construct validity; face and content validity; food literacy; internal consistency; questionnaire.