Influence of Food Purchase Behaviour on Diet Quality of University Athletes during COVID-19 Lockdown

Abstract

Lockdown order during the COVID-19 pandemic creates new norms of lifestyle, including food accessibility. To understand whether this situation might affect food purchase behaviour (FPB) and diet quality in exceptional people such as athletes, online FPB and diet quality index-international (DQI-I) questionnaires were distributed to 299 university athletes but only 195 responded. The survey found FPB score of respondents was 63.3±14.1, whereas the DQI-I score was 61.8±13.2. A strong relationship between FPB and DQI-I scores, r(193) = .64, p<.00001, was determined. FPB and DQI-I were not affected by gender, age and college seniority differences. Keywords: Food purchase behaviour, diet quality index, athletes, COVID-19 eISSN: 2398-4287 © 2022. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v7iSI7%20(Special%20Issue).3823