Development of a food practice checklist for use with low-literacy homemakers in EFNEP

A Food Practice Checklist was developed to measure food-related practices addressed in the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP), with the involvement of 70 extension professionals and paraprofessionals in 21 states. It was field-tested in a three-month intervention with 147 EFNEP homemakers. Results, both with individual items and with three subscales, indicated that the instrument was responsive in detecting change. Using factor analysis and total item correlations, items were divided into four subscales: planning, selecting, buying food food handling limiting fat in food reading food labels Cronbach's α for the subscales ranged from 0.63 to 0.90 indicating moderate to high reliability based on internal consistency. Alpha decreased for subscale B at post-test, indicating an unstable factor structure. The Food Practice Checklist represents substantial progress in developing a valid reliable and responsive food practice assessment tool.