Development and Validation of the Food Liking Questionnaire in a French-Canadian Population.

Elise Carbonneau,Sophie Desroches,Catherine Bégin,Maude Bradette-Laplante,Marie-Claude Vohl,Louise Corneau,Benoît Lamarche,Simone Lemieux,Julie Robitaille,Véronique Provencher

doi:10.3390/nu9121337

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to develop and validate a questionnaire assessing food liking in a French-Canadian population. A questionnaire was developed, in which participants were asked to rate their degree of liking of 50 food items. An expert panel evaluated the content validity. For the validation study, 150 men and women completed the questionnaire twice. An Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was performed to assess the number of subscales of the questionnaire. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the subscales were evaluated. Concurrent validity was assessed through correlations between liking scores and self-reported frequencies of consumption. Comments from the experts led to changes in the list of foods included in the questionnaire. The EFA revealed a two-factor structure for the questionnaire (i.e., savory and sweet foods) and led to the removal of nine items, resulting in a 32-item questionnaire. The two subscales revealed good internal consistency (Cronbach alphas: 0.85 and 0.89) and test-retest reliability (p = 0.84 and 0.86). The questionnaire demonstrated adequate concurrent validity, with moderate correlations between food liking and self-reported frequency of consumption (r = 0.19–0.39, ps < 0.05). This new Food Liking Questionnaire assessing liking of a variety of savory and sweet foods demonstrated good psychometric properties in every validation step. This questionnaire will be useful to explore the role of food liking and its interactions with other factors in predicting eating behaviors and energy intake.

Highlights

Food choices are influenced by a variety of factors interacting with one another
We decided to develop the Food Liking Questionnaire in order to evaluate whether a strong liking of salty, sweet, and fatty foods is a barrier to healthy eating
The questionnaire contains 32 items assessing liking for savory and sweet foods and demonstrated good psychometric properties in every validation step

Summary

Introduction

Food choices are influenced by a variety of factors interacting with one another. When many foods are available, psychophysiological (e.g., mood, hunger), situational, and hedonic cues contribute to determine what food is wanted or desired [1,2,3]. Being important determinants of food choices, food liking and preferences have been assessed in different ways in many studies. Whereas some authors have chosen to evaluate food preferences [4] (i.e., choice of a food item when two or more alternatives are presented [3]), others assessed food liking [5,6,7] (i.e., pleasantness of a food’s taste [8]), and other authors have chosen to evaluate both [9]. Questionnaires differ with the choice of foods

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