The development and validation of measures to assess cooking skills and food skills

Abstract

BackgroundWith the increase use of convenience food and eating outside the home environment being linked to the obesity epidemic, the need to assess and monitor individuals cooking and food skills is key to help intervene where necessary to promote the usage of these skills. Therefore, this research aimed to develop and validate a measure for cooking skills and one for food skills, that are clearly described, relatable, user-friendly, suitable for different types of studies, and applicable across all sociodemographic levels.MethodsTwo measures were developed in light of the literature and expert opinion and piloted for clarity and ease of use. Following this, four studies were undertaken across different cohorts (including a sample of students, both ‘Food preparation novices’ and ‘Experienced food preparers’, and a nationally representative sample) to assess temporal stability, psychometrics, internal consistency reliability and construct validity of both measures. Analysis included T-tests, Pearson’s correlations, factor analysis, and Cronbach’s alphas, with a significance level of 0.05.ResultsBoth measures were found to have a significant level of temporal stability (P < 0.001). Factor analysis revealed three factors with eigenvalues over 1, with two items in a third factor outside the two suggested measures. The internal consistency reliability for the cooking skills confidence measure ranged from 0.78 to 0.93 across all cohorts. The food skills confidence measure’s Cronbach’s alpha’s ranged from 0.85 to 0.94. The two measures also showed a high discriminate validity as there were significant differences (P < 0.05 for cooking skills confidence and P < 0.01 for food skills confidence) between Food preparation novices’ and ‘Experienced food preparers.’ConclusionsThe cooking skills confidence measure and the food skills confidence measure have been shown to have a very satisfactory reliability, validity and are consistent over time. Their user-friendly applicability make both measures highly suitable for large scale cross-sectional, longitudinal and intervention studies to assess or monitor cooking and food skills levels and confidence.

Food Agency in the United States: Associations with Cooking Behavior and Dietary Intake

“…Cooking and food skills have recently been measured by focusing on a list of specific skills or tasks (e.g., boiling, mixing, sautéing, or microwaving food; reading labels; using grocery lists; etc.) determined a priori by the research team [22,42]. Such skills may not always be applicable to everyone in all contexts and may not always be associated with healthier eating (e.g., baking a cake or preparing a gratin) [41].…”

“…A web-based survey to measure cooking skills, food skills, food agency, cooking attitudes, perceptions about the meaning of cooking, cooking confidence, cooking behavior, and dietary intake was designed. All cooking-related scales and measures were taken from previously validated surveys [22,24,28]. Because the cooking skills and food skills measures had not been validated in a US sample, we conducted "think aloud" cognitive interviews (n = 10) to ensure they were understood as intended and adjusted any wording for a US audience.…”

“…Food skills were measured using 19 items measured on the same 7-point Likert scale; however, in this case, skills focused on skills such as meal planning, shopping with a grocery list, and comparing prices when food shopping. More details about the cooking and food skills measures are published elsewhere [22,23].…”

“…Cooking skills have sometimes been measured as the ability to prepare certain sauces or dishes or the ability to use certain cooking techniques [21]. More recently, scales to measure cooking skills as well as related food skills have been developed [22]. These scales have expanded the number and types of skills considered important for home cooking and have shown that both cooking and food skills are critical for shaping dietary intake [23].…”

Influence of food preparation behaviors on 5-year weight change and obesity risk in a French prospective cohort

“…Based on published literature available at the time [ 5 , 13 , 17 , 30 , 45 ], food preparation behaviors were captured by several dimensions: cooking frequency, daily time spent on food preparation, preparation from scratch, cooking skills, cooking enjoyment, willingness to cook better or more frequently, and kitchen equipment. Recently, the area of measuring cooking skills and food preparation behaviors has been advanced in terms of development and validation, including new dimensions such as food self-efficacy, food attitude and the influence of non-food barriers [ 46 , 47 ].…”