The adolescent sport nutrition knowledge questionnaire: validity and reliability

Over the past three decades adolescents have increasingly become involved in athletics. Previous research assessed the level of sport nutrition knowledge among these youth. However, most of the tools that were used did not undergo rigorous analysis to ensure valid and reliable assessment of these young athletes' knowledge. The purpose of this study was to develop the Adolescent Sport Nutrition Knowledge Questionnaire and establish validity and reliability. The instrument consists of three sections: 1 ) demographics and history of sport participation; 2 ) questions related to nutrition attitudes and behaviors; 3) a 63-item true/false/unknown test of sport nutrition knowledge for seven varying subscales. A panel of ten experts evaluated the developed questionnaire and established construct validity. A group of 42 university students established predictive validity between the two groups with distinct knowledge differences (r2=0.05; p=0.1S). In this study, 138 adolescent male and female participants (mean age: 15.6 ± 1.16 years old) completed the questionnaire once, and 42 of these individuals completed it a second time to establish the tools reliability. The average sport nutrition knowledge score was 41.72 ± 7.81; n=134. Internal consistency of the tool was 0.86 with a narrow 95% confidence interval of 0.74-0.92 displaying a ‘good' level of reliability; however, the individual subscales were not independently reliable. Analysis of the individual questions provides evidence that there is a low level of understanding of nutritional recommendations for athletes. Stepwise multiple regression revealed age (/?=0.004) and ‘parents as the primary source of nutrition information' (p=0.002) as predictors of sport nutrition knowledge (/= 0.16; explaining 16% of the variance). This study suggests that the Sport Nutrition Knowledge Questionnaire is a valid and reliable tool to assess overall sport nutrition knowledge in adolescent athletes. However, further development of the subscales would need to be conducted to assess knowledge within these individual constructs. Sports dietitians, coaches and athletic trainers can utilize this tool to assess knowledge in adolescent athletes and to test the efficacy of sport nutrition interventions among athletes and teams.