Abstract
Background Emerging adulthood is a developmental stage in which lifestyle behaviors are established that either promote or impede health. Interventions for behavior modification often incorporate the stages of change, which are a key construct described in the transtheoretical model (TTM). There is no current assessment tool that determines how college students rate their own readiness to change and that of their administrators and peers. Objective To develop and validate a tool for college students to assess readiness to change for health. Study Design, Settings, Participants A sample of college students (n = 7,419) recruited for a larger health-related project were surveyed on readiness to change. The sample included students from 60 universities across the United States. Measurable Outcome/Analysis Survey questions were developed by a panel of six researchers with expertise in behavior change in the college population. Five dietitians were interviewed for content validation and ten college students were interviewed for face validation. Exploratory factor analysis using maximum likelihood extraction with varimax rotation was performed on a random sample of 50% of the cases, followed by a confirmatory factor analysis on the remaining 50% of the cases. Results The expert panel initially created a 28-item tool. The tool was decreased to 10 items after the interviews with dietitians. Minor changes were made to the survey following face validation. Factor analysis confirmed three factors apparent in the tool: campus community readiness (3 items, α = 0.722), campus readiness for wellness programming (3 items, α = 0.808) and student readiness (4 items, α = 0.826). Cronbach's alpha for the entire 10-item tool was 0.874. Conclusion This validated 10-item questionnaire may be used in future studies to assess college students’ readiness to change as well as for the development of campus-wide health interventions and wellness programming. Funding None.
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