TRANSLATION AND VALIDATION OF THE FOOD NEOPHOBIA SCALE (FNS) TO THE BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE.

Abstract

The Food Neophobia Scale (FNS), originally developed in English, has been widely used in different studies to assess the individual's willingness to try new foods. However, a process of translation and cultural adaptation is required to enable the use of FNS in other countries. to translate and to validate the FNS into Brazilian Portuguese. the FNS was translated into Brazilian Portuguese by three English teachers independently and back-translated into English by other three professionals. After that, both the English and Brazilian Portuguese FNS versions were administered to a sample of 40 graduate students of the University of Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil, between September and October 2014. The reproducibility between the instruments was assessed by the intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC). The internal reliability of the scale was evaluated by Cronbach's Alpha coefficient. The FNS total score ranged from 10-70 and the respondents were classified as food neophilic (≤ 16.4), neutral (16.5-38.5) and food neophobic (≥ 38.6). the ICC between the items of the original FNS and the Brazilian FNS ranged between 0.266 and 0.815 (P < 0.05). The total score of the FNS was 0.903 (p < 0.001). Cronbach's alpha coefficient was 0.916. Most respondents were classified as neutral (72.5%), other 10% as neophilics, and only 17.5% as neophobics. the Brazilian version of the FNS proved to be an adequate and reliable tool to measure food neophobia. Yet, further research is required to investigate the presence of food neophobia in Brazilian population and to analyse its impact on food behavior.