Development and validation of the Military Eating Behavior Survey

In this work, Cole et al. (2021) sought to introduce and verify the Military Eating Behavior Survey (MEBS), a tool for assessing military personnel’s eating patterns. The six-phase questionnaire development procedure included the following steps: item generation, cognitive interviewing, expert review, factor analysis, test-retest reliability testing, and parallel forms testing. A total of 1,561 US Army personnel from eight military facilities participated in the study, which was administered between 2016 and 2019, to assess the MEBS’s build, face, and content validity as well as its dependability. The MEBS was developed over six phases, reducing the original 277 items to 133 (43 focused on eating habits and 90 on mediating behaviors). Factor analysis revealed eight scales pertaining to mediating behaviors, such as body composition strategies, stress perception, sleep habits, military fitness, and nutrition knowledge, and fourteen scales pertaining to eating habits, such as hunger, satiety, food cravings, meal patterns, restraint, emotional eating, and food choices. In addition to providing a thorough instrument for evaluating military eating habits, the MEBS may direct health promotion initiatives pertaining to performance enhancement, weight control, and military preparedness and resilience. [NPID: Military personnel, survey methods, questionnaire design, eating behavior]

Year: 2021

Reference: Cole, R. E., Jayne, J. M., O’Connor, K., McGraw, S. M., Beyl, R., DiChiara, A. J., & Karl, J. P. (2021). Development and validation of the Military Eating Behavior Survey. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, 53(9), 798–810. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2021.04.467

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