Development and Reliability Testing of a Nutrition Knowledge Questionnaire for Australian Children (the CNK-AU)

To adapt and test an existing questionnaire to assess Australian children's level of nutrition knowledge.

The child nutrition knowledge questionnaire for Australian children consists of 8 nutrition-related categories: healthy choices, portion and serving sizes, balanced meals, nutrition labels, nutrient functions, and food sources, safety, and categories. Participants completed the questionnaire at 2 time points, with 1 week in between.

The questionnaire was completed online in a primary school classroom using an Android tablet.

Fifth- and sixth-year students (n = 94; aged 10.9 years; SD, 0.76) at a primary school in New South Wales, Australia.

Item difficulty, item discrimination, and reliability.

Item analysis, interrater reliability, and test-retests.

The intrarater reliability per item between the first visit and 1 week later was moderate to substantial for the majority of items (mean κ = 0.50; SD, 0.21). Test-retest found a significant correlation for total score (r = 0.756), with all categories except portion and serving sizes showing significant correlations above r = 0.502.

The child nutrition knowledge questionnaire for Australian children has the potential to be a reliable and practical questionnaire for measuring Australian children's nutrition knowledge. The questionnaire may be useful for future work evaluating the effectiveness of nutrition education interventions and would potentially be adapted to other cultures.