Survey development for assessing correlates of young adolescents' eating

Objective: To describe the development and psychometric testing of a survey to assess multiple influences on young adolescents' eating behaviors. Methods: A 204-item survey was piloted with middle-school students. We incorporated a broad view of determinants of eating behavior in an effort to expand the current field of predictors. Results: The survey was reduced to 147 items and administered to 3,878 students. Internal consistencies were generally >0.70. Test-retest reliabilities were 0.30-0.98, mostly >0.60. Conclusions: We estimated psychometric properties for a range of measures in a diverse sample. This is important as the increasing demand for outcomes-based research expands the need for psychometrically sound survey measures.