Establishing criterion validity for the Revised Critical Nutrition Literacy Tool in U.S. college students

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Critical nutrition literacy (CNL) plays an important role in how college students make everyday decisions about nutrition choices. Increasing CNL is an aim of many introductory nutrition courses, but there are limited instruments measuring this construct. This study aimed to assess the changeability of CNL and the relationship between CNL and markers of diet quality in young adults. DESIGN: This was a two-phase research project consisting of a nonexperimental, pre–post study and a cross-sectional assessment from 2018 to 2019. Participants were U.S. college students, 18-24 years old, recruited from introductory-level courses from three participating universities, located in Rhode Island, West Virginia, and New Jersey. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Interventions consisted of (1) a 4-credit, 13-week nutrition course and (2) a cross-sectional, online behavior, environment, and perception survey. CNL was measured using the Revised CNL Tool (CNLT-R) instrument across both phases. Measures for phases include: (1) the changeability of CNL and (2) the relationship between CNL and markers of diet quality. ANALYSIS: Paired t -tests and multivariate analysis of variance were utilized through SPSS version 25.0. RESULTS: CNL score significantly increased from baseline to postintervention from 3.38 ± 0.48 to 3.61 ± 0.55 ( P = 0.014). There was an overall significant effect of CNL on markers of diet quality, such as cups of fruits and vegetables (F/V) and teaspoons of added sugar (F [2,1321] = 3.12, P < 0.05; Wilks' Λ = 0.99). CONCLUSIONS: This research found that an introduction to nutrition course was associated with an increase in CNL and that CNL is related to diet quality. The instrument could be used by nutrition educators as an outcome assessment. Future research should investigate other components of the CNL construct as well as predictive validity.

Food literacy and diet quality in young vegans, lacto-ovo vegetarians, pescatarians, flexitarians and omnivores

“…Another previous study among Turkish 14-to-19-year-old omnivores reported a moderate level of critical nutrition literacy (31) , in agreement with our findings. Another study measuring critical nutrition literacy in US students (aged 18-24 years) (32) reported a mean score of 3•4, similar to our score of 3•7, using a comparable scoring system out of five (one indicated a lower level and five indicated a higher level of critical nutrition literacy). However, unlike our study, they divided the critical nutrition literacy score into three equally distributed groups to evaluate poor, moderate and high levels of critical nutrition literacy whereas we used score cut-offs to classify the groups.…”

Food literacy competencies in youth – a mini-review

“…The data extraction from the included literature in this mini-review is presented in Table 1 . The studies included describes tools published between 2017–2022, in which four studies (three different tools) measured food literacy ( 19 , 21 , 23 , 24 ) and five studies measured nutrition literacy or sub-dimensions of nutrition literacy ( 17 , 18 , 25 , 26 , 28 ). The mean age in the included studies ranged from 17–24 years, except for one previously mentioned study that did not report mean age ( 17 ).…”

“…Most of the studies referred to nutrition literacy as a construct with three sublevels (functional, interactive, and critical nutrition literacy) (18,25,26,28) and considered to be a subset of health literacy (12). Four of the nine included studies in this mini-review used a tool that measured all three sublevels of nutrition literacy (17,18,25,26), while one of the included studies measured only two subset of nutrition literacy (functional and critical nutrition literacy) (28).…”

Validitas dan reliabilitas kuesioner literasi gizi pada remaja (Nulit) di Wilayah Pascabencana

“…Namun demikian, masih terdapat sedikit hasil penelitian yang dipublikasikan di Indonesia terkait konsep literasi gizi lebih luas sejak konsep literasi gizi ini dikenalkan di dunia. Sementara itu, upaya pendidikan gizi untuk peningkatan literasi gizi perlu diupayakan untuk menyasar peningkatan komponen interactive dan critical nutrition literacy karena komponen ini sangat penting untuk memampukan seseorang mengubah perilaku makannya (Bedoyan et al, 2021).…”