Background
Very few validated instruments, particularly screening tools applicable to large cohort studies, are available to assess the behavior of local food procurement.
Objective
To develop and validate a short questionnaire that measures local food procurement in a sample of French-speaking adults from Québec, Canada and to assess the association between local food procurement behavior and diet quality.
Methods
A comprehensive questionnaire developed previously to measure local food procurement (Locavore-Index [I]) was simplified through a series of steps that included face-validity, exploratory factor analysis and reliability testing (internal consistency). Construct validity of the resulting short Locavore-I-short form (Locavore-I-SF) was examined in a sample of 299 adults (85% women) from Québec City Metropolitan Community.
Results
The Locavore-I-SF comprises 12 questions that measure the frequency of short food supply chain use (self-production, farmers’ market and community supported agriculture box scheme) for three locally produced foods (carrot, tomato and lettuce) as well as the geographical origin of those three foods. The Locavore-I-SF, which is scored on a 12-point scale, had a high internal consistency (Cronbach alpha 0.74). The Locavore-I-SF scores were strongly correlated with the reference scores obtained from the Locavore-I from which it was developed (r = 0.84, p < 0.0001). Locavore-I-SF scores also correlated (r = 0.50, p < 0.0001) with the geographical origin of foods measured by pictures of food label taken by participants. Higher Locavore-I-SF scores were associated with behaviors consistent with eating local foods such as gardening (vs not gardening, mean (±SEM) difference 2.3 ± 0.4 points, p < 0.0001) and not being preoccupied by the foods’ appearance standards (vs being preoccupied, 1.4 ± 0.4 points, p = 0.0002). Finally, the Locavore-I-SF scores were weakly associated with the Healthy Eating Food Index-2019 score (Beta = 0.05 ± 0.02, p = 0.02).
Conclusion
The Locavore-I-SF, a short questionnaire based on three locally produced foods in Québec, measures the behavior local food procurement with good reliability and acceptable validity metrics.