Home cooking quality assessment tool validation using community science and crowdsourcing approaches

Authors: RABER, MARGARET - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC); RANJIT, NALINI - University Of Texas At Austin; STRONG, LARKIN - Md Anderson Cancer Center; BASEN-ENGQUIST, KAREN - Md Anderson Cancer Center

Submitted to: Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/4/2021
Publication Date: 1/6/2022
Citation: Raber, M., Ranjit, N., Strong, L.L., Basen-Engquist, K. 2022. Home cooking quality assessment tool validation using community science and crowdsourcing approaches. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2021.10.002.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneb.2021.10.002

Interpretive Summary: The conventional wisdom is that cooking at home is better for you than eating out, and research has shown that cooking more often is linked to better diet quality in some populations. However, not all of the meals we make at home are equally healthy. We need to measure more than just frequency to understand the role of home cooking on health. Our group developed an assessment tool called the Healthy Cooking Questionnaire, which calculates the quality of one's home cooking by asking about specific food preparation practices that may have an impact on health (such as deep frying or using herbs and spices). In this study, we brought together a group of "citizen scientists" to review and refine the Healthy Cooking Questionnaire. Citizen scientists are community members that receive basic training in scientific research to help scientists make tools and programs more relevant to their communities. The citizen scientist group made many changes to the original questionnaire to make it easier for a normal person to understand. The result was a new version called the Healthy Cooking Questionnaire 2 (or HCQ2). In the second step of this study, we did an online survey study using the HCQ2. A total of 267 U.S. adults filled out the HCQ2 and answered questions about how easy it was to comprehend. Participants in the online survey study reported high comprehension of the HCQ2. This multi-step process has resulted in the first assessment tool of home cooking quality. This tool will allow us and other researchers to better explore the role of home cooking on diet and health.

Technical Abstract: Our objective was to refine a measure of home cooking quality (defined as the usage level of practices with the potential to influence the nutrient content of prepared foods) and conduct a construct validation of the revised tool, the Healthy Cooking Questionnaire 2 (HCQ2). Two validation approaches are described: (1) a community science approach used to refine and validate Healthy Cooking Questionnaire (HCQ) constructs, and (2) responses to the revised HCQ (HCQ2) in a sample of Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers to determine questionnaire comprehension. The Community Scientist Program at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center facilitated discussion groups to refine the HCQ questions and validate constructs. MTurk workers were subsequently recruited to complete the refined survey so that comprehension and associations with demographic variables could be explored. Ten community scientists participated in the refinement of the HCQ. The revised tool (HCQ2) was completed by 267 adult US-based MTurk workers. Demographics, HCQ concepts, HCQ2, and Self-Reported Questionnaire Comprehension were measured. Comprehension items were examined using descriptive statistics. Exploratory analysis the relationships between cooking quality and demographic characteristics, meal type, cooking frequency, as well as patterns of food preparation behavior was conducted on the MTurk sample. The HCQ was refined through activities and consensus-building. MTurk responses to the HCQ2 indicated high comprehension and significant differences in cooking quality scores by demographic factors. This study refined and validated a self-report measure of cooking quality. Cooking quality measures offer critical evaluation methods for culinary programs.