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Home fruit, juice, and vegetable pantry management and availability scales: a validation
Tom Baranowski1, Mariam Missaghian, Kathy Watson
1Children's Nutrition Research Center, Department of Pediatrics, Baylor College of Medicine, 1100 Bates Street, Room 2038, Houston, TX 77030-2600, USA. tbaranow@bcm.tmc.edu
Appetite
|October 26, 2007
Summary
Home availability of fruits, juice, and vegetables (FJV) encourages children
Area of Science:
- Nutrition Science
- Consumer Behavior Research
- Psychometrics
Background:
- Home availability of fruits, juice, and vegetables (FJV) is linked to increased child consumption.
- No validated scales exist for assessing home FJV pantry management practices.
- Understanding FJV availability and management is crucial for promoting healthy eating habits.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and validate a scale for home FJV pantry management practices.
- To assess a commonly used scale for home FJV availability.
- To provide tools for understanding influences on family FJV purchasing decisions.
Main Methods:
- Focus group discussions with 162 diverse food shoppers to generate pantry management scale items.
- Grocery store intercept survey with 171 food shoppers (with children) administered twice (6-week interval).
- Item Response Theory (IRT) analysis to evaluate scale dimensionality and item difficulty.
Main Results:
- Both the home FJV pantry management scale and the FJV availability scale demonstrated single dimensionality.
- IRT parameter estimates provided clear patterns regarding item difficulty for both scales.
- The developed scales are reliable and interpretable for research purposes.
Conclusions:
- Validated scales for home FJV pantry management and availability are now available.
- These scales can aid in understanding factors influencing family FJV purchasing behaviors.
- Future research can utilize these tools to investigate strategies for improving FJV access and consumption.
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