Development and Evaluation of a Questionnaire for Assessment of Determinants of Weight Disorders among Children and Adolescents: the CASPIAN-IV Study

Background: little experience exists on valid and reliable tools forassessment of the determinants of underweight and overweight inchildren and adolescents living in the middle-east and north africa(mena). this study aimed to develop a valid and widerangingquestionnaire for assessment of these parameters in a nationwidesample of iranian children and adolescents.methods: this national study was conducted in 31 provinces in iran.the first phase consisted of focus group discussion with 275 childrenand adolescents and their parents. after a qualitative content analysis,the initial items were extracted. in the next step, the face validity wasassessed by expert panelists using the quantitative method of theimpact score. to assess the content validity, the content validity rate(cvr) and the content validity index (cvi) were determined. theinternal consistency was examined by cronbach alpha, and its testretestreliability was determined. the socio-demographic variables,perinatal factors, lifestyle factors, family history, knowledge andattitude were assessed. dietary intakes were assessed by a validated168-item semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. a validatedquestionnaire for quality of life was filled in anonymously.results: a team of expert researchers conducted the data analysisof 576 interviews by using qualitative content analysis method. theanalysis process began by determining the semantic units about theconcepts studied. the initial questionnaire was developed in fourdomains by including likert scale questions. in the face validity step,all questions of the primary questionnaire obtained a score of morethan 1.5. in the phase of cvr assessment, 6 questions obtained ascore of less than 0.62, and were omitted. the rest of questions wereassessed for cvi, and got a score of more than 0.75. cronbach’salpha coefficient of the whole questionnaire was 0.97, and thepearson correlation coefficient of the test–retest phase was 0.94.conclusion: the developed questionnaire is a valid and reliable toolfor assessment of the determinants of weight disorders in a nationallyrepresentative sample of children and adolescents in the mena.