• Maria Vittoria Conti, Marco Gnesi, Rachele De Giuseppe, and Hellas Cena.
• Laboratory of Dietetics and Clinical Nutrition, Department of Public Health, Experimental and Forensic Medicine, University of Pavia, via Bassi 21, 27100 Pavia, Italy. Electronic address: mariavittoria.conti01@universitadipavia.it.
• Nutrition. 2021 Oct 1; 90: 111218.

BackgroundThe incidence of malnutrition in developing countries, such as many of those located in Sub-Saharan Africa, is still high, especially in vulnerable categories such as women of childbearing age. Among the several factors influencing dietary intake and eating habits, evidence shows the importance of food knowledge (FK), essential in establishing and maintaining strategies aimed at reducing the burden of disease and promoting wellbeing. The present research was aimed at describing the methodology for designing a questionnaire to investigate Food Knowledge in Tanzania women of childbearing age.MethodsThe Food Knowledge Questionnaire (FKQ) was developed by adapting items from the Ugandan questionnaire to cultural background and food habits of Tanzanian women of childbearing age. A pilot version of the FKQ was tested on a small sample of respondents, 83 women of childbearing age living in the region of Arusha. After describing the sample and the scorings, the pilot version of the questionnaire was analysed through Multiple Correspondence Analysis, aimed at exploring the relationships between items and the properties of the scoring system.ResultsThe exploratory analyses of the questionnaire allowed to identify those items not related to the others and whose scores were not related to food knowledge, therefore constituting the basis for the questionnaire to be refined and validated.DiscussionThe final version of the Tanzanian FKQ "to be validated" ended up consisting of five sections: Section A, about social and economic information (17 questions); Section B, related to health experts advice (5 questions); Section C1 and C2 about food groups (7+7 questions); Section D about diseases and nutrition (6 questions). The questionnaire includes 114 close-ended questions in total. The exploratory analyses performed have led to define the relationships between items and latent constructs, allowing to identify of "correct food knowledge" and "incorrect food knowledge" archetypals.Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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