Establishment of nutrition literacy core items for Chinese pregnant women

Abstract

Objective: To establish the nutrition literacy core items for Chinese pregnant women. Methods: The framework system and preliminary items of nutrition literacy were established through literature review and experts consultation. E-Delphi method was used to determine the nutrition literacy items.11 experts in the field of maternal and child nutrition, obstetrics and gynecology, health education and nutrition and diseases were invited to score the importance of each nutrition literacy item via Email. The judgment basis and familiarity of experts towards the items, active coefficient, authority coefficient and harmony coefficient were evaluated and analyzed to generate the final list of nutrition literacy items. Results: The active coefficients of consultation in two rounds were 81.8% (9/11) and 87.5% (8/9).The authority coefficients were (0.86±0.11) and (0.85±0.06).The average scores of importance were (4.32±0.84) and (4.58±0.57) and the harmony coefficients were 0.387 (χ²=90.472, P<0.001) and 0.290 (χ²=46.752, P=0.002) respectively. After the second round of consultation, all selected items met the inclusion criteria. We identified the final list of nutrition literacy items consisting of 3 scales (basic knowledge and concept, lifestyles and dietary behaviors, and basic skills), 10 sub-scales (basic nutrition concept, food and nutrition knowledge, nutrition and disease knowledge, lifestyles, dietary behaviors, preparation for breastfeeding, gestational weight management, gestational disease management, acquisition, understanding and application of nutrition information, judgement of nutrition information, and nutrition decision making) with 24 items in total. Conclusions: The framework system and core items of nutrition literacy are established for Chinese pregnant women based on E-Delphi method. The experts involved in the consultation process present a performance with good representativeness, enthusiasm and authority. All experts' opinions are coordinated and unified, which could satisfy the demand of developing nutrition literacy core items for target population.