Food Involvement Scale Research Articles

Relating the food involvement scale to demographic variables, food choice and other constructs

This paper describes recent research with the Food Involvement Scale (FIS), relating it to other constructs and demographics, and its potential influence on food choices. We administered the FIS and other established scales to a sample of undergraduates ( n=109) from a UK university. The FIS was found to be associated with many other scales, and a multiple regression suggested that higher levels of food involvement are associated with living with two or more friends, cooking for one's self, having regular meals, and being older. We then administered the FIS along with the Block Food Frequency questionnaire to a sample of military personnel ( n=2068) and compared food intake patterns between high and low involvement subjects. The analysis suggests that food involvement, as measured by FIS, appears to mediate differences in food choices and food choice patterns.

The construct of food involvement in behavioral research: scale development and validation ☆

The construct of involvement has been found to influence brand loyalty, product information search processing, responses to advertising communications, diffusion of innovations, and ultimately, product choice decisions. Traditionally, involvement has been defined as being a characteristic of either a product or of an individual. In the present research, we make an assumption that an individual's ‘food involvement’ is a somewhat stable characteristic and we hypothesized that involvement with foods would vary between individuals, that individuals who are more highly involved with food would be better able to discriminate between a set of food samples than would less food involved individuals, and that this discrimination would operate both in affective and perceptive relative judgments. Using standard scale construction techniques, we developed a measure of the characteristic of food involvement, based on activities relating to food acquisition, preparation, cooking, eating and disposal. After several iterations, a final 12-item measure was found to have good test–retest reliability and internal consistency within two subscales. A behavioral validation study demonstrated that measures of food involvement were associated with discrimination and hedonic ratings for a range of foods in a laboratory setting. These findings suggest that food involvement, as measured by the Food Involvement Scale, may be an important mediator to consider when undertaking research with food and food habits.