Now we're cooking with childcare providers! Evaluation of a survey tool for cooking-based, nutrition training in childcare settings

Introduction: Share Our Strength's Cooking Matters for Child Care Professionals teaches participants how to prepare healthy meals and create a positive food environment for children. It aims to improve important outcomes that may ultimately relate to obesity prevention in child care settings, including modeling healthy behaviors, preparing kid-friendly healthy meals, and budgeting for healthy foods. Currently, few tools exist for evaluating cooking-based nutrition education programs. Cooking Matters sought to develop and test a tool to measure the effectiveness of these 10-hour professional trainings delivered across the US.

Methods: Using a survey instrument designed specifically for this program, Cooking Matters and its research partner, the Gretchen Swanson Center for Nutrition, conducted fourteen cognitive interviews to evaluate the content, design, and understandability of the survey to ensure the instrument was appropriate for a wide range of childcare professionals. Additionally, survey data from 1,077 participants was analyzed through psychometric testing (e.g., factor analysis and internal consistency).

Results: Cognitive interviewing revealed that survey items were generally well-understood by interviewees; however, specific changes to wording of items and layout of the survey were identified and incorporated. Factor analysis identified three independent factors: self-efficacy, healthy practices, and modeling healthy behaviors. Strong internal consistency was displayed among survey constructs, (Cronbach's alphas: 0.74-0.92).

Discussion: The evaluation instrument was shown to have very good reliability and improvements were incorporated to enhance understandability of the survey. Given the lack of tools assessing cooking-based nutrition education outcomes in the childcare setting, this tool has practical implications for similar efforts.