Assessing childhood food neophobia: Validation of a scale in Italian primary school children

Abstract

Most of the studies published on childhood food neophobia rely on parents’ reports of their children’s degree of neophobia and not on children’s reports. Information about children’s food behavior obtained from questionnaires provided to the parents may be misleading because relying solely on parent’s reports underestimates the role of the child in the process. The aim of the present study was to develop and validate a self-report measure of food neophobia designed for Italian primary school children by adapting the Food Neophobia Scale (FNS) proposed by Pliner and Hobden in 1992. The Italian Child Food Neophobia Scale (ICFNS) consists of 8 items (4 neophobic and 4 neophilic). Simple and age-appropriate vocabulary was used, and items were slightly modified to describe situations likely to be familiar to children. The ICFNS was tested on a sample of 491 6- to 9-year-old Italian children. Internal consistency and test–retest reliability were satisfactory. External validity data showed that the ICFNS predicted both the children’s willingness to taste and liking of novel food. The results analyzed by age group indicated that younger children (6years old) were not repeatable between the first and second administration of the questionnaire. Additionally, the ICFNS scores for the 6- and 7-year-old children were not significantly correlated with either willingness to taste or liking one of the two novel foods tested. Therefore, the ICFNS can be reliably used with Italian primary school children starting from the age of 8years and most likely as early as 7years. For 6-year-old children, adapted administration methods are recommended to achieve reliable results. Developing scales to measure food neophobia directly in children has important implications for the study of childhood eating behavior and may be an effective tool for measuring children’s willingness to try new food when administering school-based food educational programs.