Abstract
BackgroundYouth advocacy has been successfully used in substance use prevention but is a novel strategy in obesity prevention. As a precondition for building an evidence base for youth advocacy for obesity prevention, the present study aimed to develop and evaluate measures of youth advocacy mediator, process, and outcome variables.MethodsThe Youth Engagement and Action for Health (YEAH!) program (San Diego County, CA) engaged youth and adult group leaders in advocacy for school and neighborhood improvements to nutrition and physical activity environments. Based on a model of youth advocacy, scales were developed to assess mediators, intervention processes, and proximal outcomes of youth advocacy for obesity prevention. Youth (baseline n = 136) and adult group leaders (baseline n = 47) completed surveys before and after advocacy projects. With baseline data, we created youth advocacy and adult leadership subscales using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and described their psychometric properties.ResultsYouth came from 21 groups, were ages 9–22, and most were female. Most youth were non-White, and the largest ethnic group was Hispanic/Latino (35.6 %). The proposed factor structure held for most (14/20 youth and 1/2 adult) subscales. Modifications were necessary for 6 of the originally proposed 20 youth and 1 of the 2 adult multi-item subscales, which involved splitting larger subscales into two components and dropping low-performing items.ConclusionsInternally consistent scales to assess mediators, intervention processes, and proximal outcomes of youth advocacy for obesity prevention were developed. The resulting scales can be used in future studies to evaluate youth advocacy programs.
Highlights
Youth advocacy has been successfully used in substance use prevention but is a novel strategy in obesity prevention
The goal of the present study was to test the psychometric properties of the surveys used to evaluate a youth obesity prevention advocacy program, Youth Engagement and Action for Health (YEAH!), though the measures were designed for wider use
Based on recommendations, anecdotes, and internet search popularity, there is a great deal of current policy and practice interest in the potential for youth advocacy for obesity prevention
Summary
Youth advocacy has been successfully used in substance use prevention but is a novel strategy in obesity prevention. As a precondition for building an evidence base for youth advocacy for obesity prevention, the present study aimed to develop and evaluate measures of youth advocacy mediator, process, and outcome variables. Though under-studied intervention is advocacy for nutrition and physical activity environment. A related line of research aiming to increase youth physical activity and nutrition showed that improving youth’s proxy efficacy, a construct underlying advocacy, mediated physical activity changes [15,16,17]. Based on SYMATU and related studies, our group developed a conceptual framework for youth empowerment for obesity prevention that included the following domains: predisposing youth characteristics, collective participation, group structure, adult and institutional involvement, and group climate [18].
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