Translation and Validation of the Child Feeding Questionnaire by Birch et al., 2001 to Develop a Sinhala Version

Abstract

The high prevalence of obesity, as well as growth failure among children, is of great concern, especially in developing countries. Environmental factors, especially familial factors, have a strong influence on the food intake of preschool-aged children, and this has led to the development of psychometric scales to measure parents’ feeding practices. The Child Feeding Questionnaire (CFQ) English version by Birch et al., 2001 is a self-reported measure to assess aspects of child-feeding perceptions, attitudes, and practices of parents of children aged 2-11 years. The aim of this study was translation and validation of Child Feeding Practices Questionnaire (CFQ) for Sinhala speaking parents of preschool-aged children. The systematic method proposed by Beaton et al. 2000 was used for the cross-cultural adaptation of self-reported measures consisting of five stages: forward translation, synthesis of translations, backward translation, expert committee review and pre-testing. The final 31-items scale was used for psychometric evaluation. The questionnaire was pretested on 100, 141 of similar sample of parents of preschool-aged children using a stratified random sampling strategy. The confirmatory factor analysis of the final version revealed a satisfactory level of factor structure (>0.3) and the Cronbach alpha values for the tool as a whole were acceptable: 0.79 (>0.7). The modified CFQ is applicable to use within the Sinhala speaking cultural context as a validated, reliable scale for a more comprehensive understanding of parental feeding practices for preschoolers.