Development of Dietary Information Literacy Scale for Competition (DILS-C) in Japanese College Athletes

This study aimed to examine the scale for reliability and validity of the dietary information literacy scale for competition (DILS-C) in college athletes. This cross-sectional study was performed using a self-report questionnaire for college athletes who belong to the club of the university located in Ibaraki prefecture, Japan, from October to December 2014. The final sample comprised 953 college athletes, 684 males and 269 females, aged 18 to 22 y. Following item selection by exploratory factor analysis, the scale's reliability and validity were examined via internal consistency and confirmatory factor analysis. Furthermore, a retest for 376 athletes was conducted at about 3-wk intervals. Factor analysis of literacy measure indicated that the scale consists two sub-scales-communicative literacy and critical literacy. The Cronbach's α coefficient assessing the internal consistency reliability was acceptable (communicative literacy=0.84, critical literacy=0.79). Excellent goodness-of-fit indices of communicative and critical literacy were obtained by confirmatory factor analysis (GFI=0.95, AGFI=0.92, CFI=0.95, RMSEA=0.08). Retest reliability was within an allowable range (communicative literacy ICC=0.52, critical literacy ICC=0.50). The present study suggested that the reliability and factorial validity were confirmed in the DILS-C in college athletes.