Nutrition literacy in adults adaptation of the assessment questionnaire to Turkish: Validity-reliability study

This research was planned and conducted in order to measure the attitudes of individuals towards nutritional literacy, to develop a specific measurement tool related to this field, to conduct validity and reliability studies and to determine the nutritional literacy status of adult individuals. A demographic information form for each of 314 volunteers aged 18-64 who took one-to-one lessons with the support of a dietitian who is a member of the sports center, the World Health Organization Short Form of Quality of Life Scale (WHOQOL-BREF-TR) to evaluate their general health status, and the nutritional literacy levels of A 40-item Nutrition Literacy Evaluation Tool for Adults was filled in to measure it. According to the validity and reliability analysis; The 40-item Nutrition Literacy Assessment Tool gathered under five factors (dimensions) and the reliability coefficients of both the total and sub-dimensions of the scale were found to be over 0.60. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was applied to prove the validity of the factor dimensions. In terms of time factor, test-retest reliability analysis (intraclass correlation coefficient) results also showed that the Nutrition Literacy Assessment Tool was moderately reliable. Statistical analyzes were made in SPSS 20.0 program. Since the answers in the scale were taken as true or false (1 and 0), binary confirmatory factor analysis calculated from tetrachronic correlations was applied instead of classical confirmatory analysis. Whether the collected data is suitable for the desired model or not was analyzed using the Tetra-com syntax (156) with the SPSS program and the AMOS Structural Equation Model. It was observed that an increase occurred in the quality of life score in terms of the nutritional literacy score of the individuals (r=0.213; p<0.05). In order to increase nutritional literacy, and in parallel with this, healthy eating habits and quality of life in all groups in the society, nutrition education activities should be organized starting from the family and accompanied by school and other professionals, and these activities should be supervised by dietitians. The Nutrition Literacy scores were modified in accordance with the literature and classified as follows: ≤28 points: Probability of malnutrition literacy, 29-38 points: Probability of poor nutritional literacy, ≥39 points: Probability of good nutrition literacy. As a result of this study, it was found that the nutritional literacy levels of the participants were sufficient. When the scores obtained from the nutritional literacy sub-factors are examined; 98.6% of individuals' general nutritional knowledge, 90.7% of reading comprehension, 100% of food groups questions, 44.4% of questions about portion amount and 92% of individuals from questions about label literacy. It has been observed that ,1 of them have adequate nutrition literacy level. It was concluded that women's total nutritional literacy score was higher than men's total nutritional literacy score. No significant difference was observed between male and female individuals in terms of total quality of life score. As a result, it is considered that the effects of sports, nutrition and life centers, which play a role in shaping nutritional habits, should not be ignored and this situation can be achieved through seminars in institutions.