Development and Validation of a Multidimensional Instrument: Assessing Barriers to Dietary Practices.

Background and Purpose: Poor dietary practices are linked to many chronic diseases. The purpose of this validation study was to develop a psychometrically sound instrument that can be administered by health practitioners to measure dietary barriers. Methods: The Dietary Health Status (DHS) instrument, designed to measure dietary barriers is comprised of items in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey-What We Eat in America datasets. Content validity was established for DHS using an expert review process. Principal component analysis (PCA) was then used to assess validity and reliability as determined by Cronbach's alpha values. Results: The PCA supported a 10-component solution, explaining 61% of the total variance. Cronbach's alpha was.67 for the entire instrument, ranging from.55 to.87 for the 10 subscales. Conclusion: Results suggest the instrument had sufficient construct and internal validity. This exploratory study is an important first step in validating the DHS instrument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]