Reliability and validity study of the children’s eating behavior questionnaire in Chinese school-age children

Abstract

Children’s Eating Behavior Questionnaire (CEBQ) was widely used in western countries to measure children’s eating behavior and played an important role in the research on the risk of childhood obesity, but it is rarely used in China yet. This study aimed to examine the Chinese version of CEBQ’s reliability and validity in a pilot study, then applied it to bigger population. Data was collected with CEBQ in two districts of Shanghai, respectively. Using stratified cluster sampling method, a total of 2,520 children were included in the study. The questionnaires were filled out by children’s parents. It was proved that the Cronbach’s coefficient α of the questionnaire was greater than 0.7, indicating that the questionnaire had good internal consistency. Aside from the subscales ‘Emotional undereating’ and ‘Food fussiness’, the Pearson’s correlation coefficients of the other sub-scales were all greater than 0.5. It showed that test-retest reliability of CEBQ was accept-able. We found that boys and girls had different eating behavior characteristics. And there was a graded association between eating behavior and nutritional status of school-age children. It suggested that appetitive traits of school-age children could be used as indicators of susceptibility to weight gain. In conclusion, the Chinese version of CEBQ was of good reliability and validity, so it is considered as a reliable tool that can be applied to Chinese school-age children’s eating behavior and related studies.