Daycare teachers: Nutrition knowledge, opinions, and use of food

Pre‐school staffs’ attitudes toward foods in relation to the pedagogic meal

“…24 Nahikian-Nelms found a positive correlation between nutrition knowledge and behaviour at mealtime, nutrition knowledge and attitudes, and attitudes and caregiver behaviour. 24 Nahikian-Nelms found a positive correlation between nutrition knowledge and behaviour at mealtime, nutrition knowledge and attitudes, and attitudes and caregiver behaviour.…”

“…Gillis and Sabrez noted that pre-school teachers are in a position to directly influence the quality and type of food available to the children, as well as the development of food preferences. 24 Nahikian-Nelms found a positive correlation between nutrition knowledge and behaviour at mealtime, nutrition knowledge and attitudes, and attitudes and caregiver behaviour. 8 For example, if caregivers fail to sit with children, consume the same foods, and create a positive, pleasant environment, positive role modelling may not occur.…”

The Development of a Psychometrically Valid and Reliable Questionnaire to Assess Nutrition Knowledge Related to Pre-Schoolers

“…A first step for providing this support is to accurately identify knowledge deficits, in which using a valid and reliable ECEC teacher nutrition and physical activity knowledge questionnaire is useful. The current range of ECEC teacher nutrition and physical activity knowledge questionnaires that demonstrate at least construct and content validity are relatively out-of-date (ranging from 1972-2010) [9][10][11][12], mostly related to US teachers [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20], and/or often include content that is not specific to pre-schoolers' nutrition nor physical activity [11,17,18,21]. Other knowledge questionnaires focusing on the diet of young children have been used to assess parental knowledge, but these are limited in scope, lack validity, and feature items that are overly specialised, for example, asking parents to decide if the following statement is correct: "If one should pay attention to the weight of a pre-schooler, it is preferable to substitute potatoes by rice and pasta" [22,23].…”

“…Other knowledge questionnaires focusing on the diet of young children have been used to assess parental knowledge, but these are limited in scope, lack validity, and feature items that are overly specialised, for example, asking parents to decide if the following statement is correct: "If one should pay attention to the weight of a pre-schooler, it is preferable to substitute potatoes by rice and pasta" [22,23]. Through a semi-structured literature review of caregivers' nutrition knowledge, we identified only four [9,10,12,24] of 15 studies used nutrition/physical activity knowledge questionnaires that showed content and construct validity; four were partially validated (no construct validity) [16,19,20,25], and the remaining seven [13][14][15]17,18,21,26] either did not describe validation methods or did not appear to be validated. These characteristics may have limited the quality of evidence for ECEC teachers' nutrition knowledge.…”

“…Psychometrics, the science of maximising quality assessment, provides criteria for validating a knowledge questionnaire [27]. Common forms of validity used for nutrition knowledge questionnaires include content and construct validity and test-retest reliability [9][10][11]16,28,29]. Content validity refers to how well the questionnaire content matches with the questionnaire purpose [27,30], and is usually assessed by using feedback from experts in the instrument's relevant field.…”