title: Development and preliminary validation of Chinese preschoolers' eating behavior questionnaire.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The objective of this study was to develop a questionnaire for caregivers to assess the eating behavior of Chinese preschoolers.
  
  
  METHODS
  To assess children's eating behaviors, 152 items were derived from a broad review of the literature related to epidemiology surveys and the assessment of children's eating behaviors. All of these items were reviewed by 50 caregivers of preschoolers and 10 experienced pediatricians. Seventy-seven items were selected for use in a primary questionnaire. After conducting an exploratory factor analysis and a variability analysis on the data from 313 preschoolers used to evaluate this primary questionnaire, we deleted 39 of these 77 items. A Chinese Preschoolers' Eating Behavior Questionnaire (CPEBQ) was finally established from the remaining 38 items. The structure of this questionnaire was explored by factor analysis, and its reliability, validity and discriminative ability were evaluated with data collected from caregivers of 603 preschoolers.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The CPEBQ consisted of 7 dimensions and 38 items. The 7 dimensions were food fussiness, food responsiveness, eating habit, satiety responsiveness, exogenous eating, emotional eating and initiative eating. The Cronbach's α coefficient for the questionnaire was 0.92, and the test-retest reliability was 0.72. There were significant differences between the scores of normal-weight, overweight and obese preschoolers when it was referred to food fussiness, food responsiveness, eating habits, satiety responsiveness and emotional eating (p<0.05). Differences in caregiver's education levels also had significant effects on scores for food fussiness, eating habits and exogenous eating (p<0.05).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The CPEBQ satisfies the conditions of reliability and validity, in accordance with psychometric demands. The questionnaire can be employed to evaluate the characteristics of Chinese preschoolers' eating behaviors; therefore, it can be used in child health care practice and research.
authors: Department of Pediatrics, Tangdu Hospital, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China.
authors: Xun
authors: X
authors: Jiang
authors: Department of Health Statistics, School of Public Health, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China.
authors: Xianjun
authors: X
authors: Yang
authors: Department of Health Statistics, School of Public Health, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China.
authors: Yuhai
authors: Y
authors: Zhang
authors: Department of Pediatrics, Tangdu Hospital, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China.
authors: Baoxi
authors: B
authors: Wang
authors: Department of Health Statistics, School of Public Health, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China.
authors: Lijun
authors: L
authors: Sun
authors: Department of Health Statistics, School of Public Health, Fourth Military Medical University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, China.
authors: Lei
authors: L
authors: Shang
mesh_terms: D044466:Asian People; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002681:China; D003710:Demography; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires