The validity and reliability study of the food andnutrition literacy assessment tool in late adolescentsin Turkey

This study aimed to adapt the Food and Nutrition Literacy Assessment Tool (FNLAT) to Turkish, examine the validity and reliability of the Turkish version, and compare it with another nutrition literacy scale in late adolescents in Turkey. The FNLAT, originally developed and validated in Iran, was adapted to Turkish. The study included demographic data, health and nutrition information, anthropometric measurements, the Food and Nutrition Literacy Assessment Tool, and another nutrition literacy scale, applied to 880 participants aged 18–23 years who met the inclusion criteria and provided informed consent. Three weeks after the initial application, the FNLAT and GBOY scales were re-administered to 80 randomly selected participants for test-retest analysis. In this study, validity analyses of the Turkish-adapted FNLAT included item analyses, comparison of the top and bottom 27% groups, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and convergent validity methods. Reliability was evaluated using internal consistency coefficients, intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC), Spearman-Brown coefficients, and Bland-Altman plots. The factor structure of the adapted scale was confirmed by CFA using the original scale as a reference. Significant and positive relationships were found between FNLAT1 and GBOY1 sub-dimensions (knowledge, attitude, and behavior), with a particularly strong relationship observed with the behavior dimension (r = 0.433, p = 0.000). No significant relationship was detected between FNLAT1 scores and BMI (r = 0.21, p = 0.539). The Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the Turkish version was 0.812, and the test-retest reliability ICC was 0.835 (95% CI 0.742–0.894; p<0.001). These findings were highly consistent with the Cronbach's alpha (0.841) and ICC (0.928) values of the original scale, demonstrating the validity and reliability of the Turkish adaptation. Keywords: Food literacy, nutrition literacy, FNLAT, late adolescents, adaptation study, validity, reliability.