Translation, cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the Weight Management Questionnaire in the Brazilian...

The prevalence of obesity has increased considerably worldwide, and it has become an important risk factor for chronic non-communicable diseases.

To translate, cross-culturally adapt, and validate the Weight Management Questionnaire (WMQ) to evaluate weight control practices for health monitoring and intervention in Brazil.

This was a quantitative cross-sectional study.

Obese and physically active lean individuals aged 18-59 years were included in this study. The tool used as an adaptation was the WMQ. The cross-cultural adaptation was conducted in five phases. For structural validity, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to verify the internal structure considering two domains: diet and physical activity. To determine construct validity, a comparison was performed between different groups (lean versus obese). Reliability was assessed using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC).

The short version of the WMQ after CFA presented eight items. Thus, the structure with two domains presented adequate fit indices: chi-square/degree of freedom = 1.66, comparative fit index = 0.996, Tucker-Lewis index = 0.994, root mean square error of approximation = 0.057, and standardized root mean square residual = 0.047. For construct validity, a significant difference was observed between the groups (P < 0.05) in both domains. We observed adequate reliability for both domains (ICC ≥ 0.854).

The WMQ can be used for the Brazilian population, as it is reliable and has adequate internal structure, supporting its use in future research.