Adherence to the Mediterranean Diet in College Students: Evaluation of Psychometric Properties of the KIDMED Questionnaire

Overview

Journal Nutrients

Date 2021 Jan 9

PMID 33419254

Citations 7

Authors

Miguel Alejandro Atencio-Osorio

Hugo Alejandro Carrillo-Arango

Maria Correa-Rodriguez

Andres Felipe Ochoa-Munoz

Robinson Ramirez-Velez

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

No prior studies have examined the reliability properties of the 16-item Mediterranean Diet Quality Index (KIDMED) questionnaire among young adults from a non-Mediterranean country. The objective of this study was to determine the psychometric properties in terms of the reliability and validity of the KIDMED questionnaire in young adults from Colombia. A cross-sectional validation study was conducted among 604 Colombian college students (47.51% men and 52.48% women; mean age of 21.60 ± 2.02 years). Kappa statistics were used to assess the reliability of the KIDMED questionnaire. A categorical principal components analysis was used to determine validity. Based on the KIDMED score, 58.4% of students had a good adherence to the Mediterranean diet (MedDiet). Good agreement in the general score of the questionnaire was observed (κ = 0.727, 95% confidence interval = 0.676 to 0.778, < 0.001). A five-factor model was identified which explained almost 51.38% of the variability, showing the multidimensionality of the questionnaire. In conclusion, this study provides reasonable evidence for the reliability and validity of the KIDMED questionnaire for assessing adherence to MedDiet in college students within a Latin American country. The evaluation of the psychometric properties of this tool in early adulthood and in a non-Mediterranean country will be useful in clinical practice and epidemiological research, since practitioners and health researchers now have a valid and reliable short scale.

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