Development and Testing of a Food and Nutrition Practice Checklist (FNPC) for Use with Basic Nutrition and Disease Prevention Education Programs

Each year, the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) and Food Stamp Nutrition Education (FSNE) receive around 60 million dollars in federal funding. In order to document impacts, it is critical that these programs utilize valid and reliable instruments. By having validated instruments that measure behavior changes, it can be documented that these federally funded programs are achieving program objectives. To date, research on measurements of change is either lacking or under-reported.

The goal of this study was to develop a valid and reliable assessment instrument to be utilized with a specific curriculum titled Healthy Futures, which is used within Virginia FSNE. To accomplish this, an expert panel was assembled to conceptualize and construct the instrument. The instrument was pilot-tested, evaluated, then finalized and tested. Results with 73 individuals representing 34 white, non-Hispanics and 36 non-Hispanic blacks, found that the physical activity and dietary quality domains of the instrument had achieved an acceptable test-retest reliability coefficient of .70, however the food safety domain achieved a 0.51. For validity, the instrument scored an overall Spearman Correlation Coefficient of 0.28 for physical activity, 0.34 for food safety, and 0.20 for dietary quality. All three domains were sensitive to change (p < 0.0001). The results indicate that this instrument could detect dietary and physical activity change among limited resource participants of FSNE with confidence.