Validation of a Scale for Measuring Responsible Food Consumption in High School Adolescents

Abstract

Responsible consumption is defined in environmental, cultural, economic, ethical and social terms. The subject has been studied for at least 50 years. Currently, the description of the responsible consumer is relevant, given the climate complications humankind is facing. Having an instrument to identify responsible food consumption in the adolescent population will be a significant contribution to both the scientific field and to group interventions. The objective of this research was to design and validate a scale to measure responsible food consumption in adolescents (Responsible Food Consumption Scale in Adolescents ECRAA) using a sample of 286 high school students. The scale consists of 9 items distributed in two dimensions - attitudes and emotions. It was designed and validated through a cross-sectional study. Aiken's V coefficient and a confirmatory factor analysis was used to validate the scale’s content; to approve the construct validity, convergent validity and discriminant validity was used, and reliability was measured by calculating the composite reliability, Cronbach's alpha, omega coefficient, Guttman coefficient (Lambda-6), and Spearman-Brown correction. The ECRAA proved to have adequate properties. All 9 items received a positive evaluation by the experts. The Confirmatory factor analysis supported the structure with favorable goodness-of-fit indices, and the reliability of the data was acceptable. Thus, the ECRAA is valid and reliable for measuring responsible food consumption in adolescents.