Measuring Athletes’ Perception of the Sport Nutrition Information Environment: The Adaptation and Validation of the Diet Information Overload Scale among Elite Athletes

Abstract

The exponentially growing quantity of nutrition information creates a new situation and challenge for every stakeholder, from athletes, coaches and nutritionists to policymakers. To measure the perception of the information environment related to healthy eating, the diet information overload scale was developed. The scale consists of eight items, measuring the perceived importance of pieces of information overload on Likert-type scales. The objective of the study was to test the applicability and validity of the diet information overload scale among athletes. A cross-sectional validation study was conducted with elite athletes (n = 177). To validate each item of the scale, we applied Cronbach’s alpha test, and the inner consistency of the scale was analyzed with linear correlation coefficients of the different variables. To evaluate the relationship between question groups, we applied factor analysis. The different fit indices showed a good fit to the model; the Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) value was 0.09 and the Tucker–Lewis index (TLI) value was 0.84. The indicators of reliability (α based upon the covariances = 0.81) produced suitable results; thus, the sport nutrition information overload scale showed high reliability and applicability. Based on the sport nutrition information overload scale, further analysis could be carried out on how to optimize the content of key pieces of sport nutrition-related information.

A Comprehensive Analysis of Sports Nutrition Knowledge and Diet Diversity Among South Indian Athletes

“…It could be attributed to dearth of financial resources and lack of nutritional knowledge of coaches, trainers, parents and athletes themselves (Cherian et al, 2020). On contrary elite athletes are overloaded with nutritional information from various sources and they are also able to afford to consult a sports nutritionist (Kiss et al, 2021). In order to close this gap, there is a need to assess the nutritional knowledge of athletes and provide the access to accurate nutritional information (Tam et al, 2022).…”