Development and validation of the ASKFV-SE tool to measure children's self-efficacy for requesting fruits and vegetables

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to develop the ASKFV-SE tool to measure self-efficacy (SE) towards requesting fruits and vegetables (FV) in the home and school environment with school-Age children (grades 4-5) from urban, ethnically diverse, low-income households. Cognitive interviews reduced the tool from eleven items to seven. The 7-item questionnaire was tested with 444 children. The items loaded on two factors: home SE (four items) and school SE (two items) with one item was excluded (<0.40). The reduced 6-item, 2-factor structure was the best fit for the data (?2 = 45.09; df = 9; CFI = 0.835; RMSEA = 0.147). Confirmatory factory analysis revealed that the 4-item home SE had high reliability (α = 0.73) and marginally acceptable reliability for the 2-item school SE (α = 0.53). The pre-COVID intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) was 0. 584 (P < 0.001; fair; n = 57) compared to 0.736 during-COVID (P < 0.001; good; n 50). The ASKFV-SE tool measures children's SE for asking for FVs with strong psychometric properties and low participant burden.