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Validation of the baby eating behaviour questionnaire in a Chilean population

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Abstract

Eating behaviors traits are present from early infancy and are associated with a greater risk for obesity in childhood. The Baby Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (BEBQ) is a tool developed to measure eating behavior in infants. The aim of this study was to (i) translate, (ii) culturally adapt, and (iii) evaluate the psychometric properties of the BEBQ in a Chilean sample. BEBQ was translated into Chilean-Spanish using a forward and back-translation process. Translations were cross-checked for cultural interpretability with mothers and inconsistencies were resolved with an expert panel. 101 dyads were recruited when infants were aged five months. Mothers completed the BEBQ and Infants were weighed and measured. Subscale scores were calculated for BEBQ subscales. Factor analysis was used to identify the structure of the BEBQ. Internal consistency was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha (α). Factor analysis identified a good fit for a 4-factor structure of appetite factors, with moderate to good internal consistency: “food responsiveness” (α = 0.83), “enjoyment of food” (α = 0.77), satiety responsiveness (α = 0.61), except for slowness in eating (α = 0.58). All items loaded onto the original factor structure with exception of items 5 and 6, that load on to slowness in eating (ns). Boys (n = 43;42%) reported higher general appetite scores in relation to girls (p-value = 0.007). Infants with obesity BMI z-scores (n = 17; 19%) had lower satiety responsiveness scores compared to infants in the healthy weight range (p-value = 0.006). This study describes the psychometric properties of the Chilean Spanish BEBQ and supports the validity of the factor structure and internal consistency in a population sample of Chilean infants.

Level V: Evidence obtained from a cross-sectional descriptive study.

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Data availability

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Abbreviations

BEBQ:

Baby eating behavior questionnaire

CEBQ:

Child eating behavior questionnaire

BMI:

Body mass index

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo ANID, Vinculación Internacional, Proyecto REDI170368.

The authors acknowledge the help of the entire team of the San Sebastian University, Chile and the network Iceberg “International Collaborative Eating Behaviour Research Group”.

Funding

This study was supported by the National research and development agency through the International Cooperation Program, PCI Grant Nº REDI170368.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

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Obregón AM

Valladares M

Guzman E

Pettinelli P

Hunot C

Smith A

Llewellyn C

G Goldfield

Definition

Methodology

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Development or design of methodology; creation of models

Software

        

Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components

Validation

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Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/ reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs

Formal analysis

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Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data

Investigation

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X

      

Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection

Resources

X

       

Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools

Data Curation

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X

 

X

    

Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse

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Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation)

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Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/ data presentation

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Funding acquisition

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Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ana María Obregón.

Ethics declarations

Ethical approval

The study protocol was approved by the Research Scientific Ethics Committee of San Sebastián University.

Informed consent

Written consent was obtained from each participant.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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What is already known on this subject?

The BEBQ is a new instrument for the assessment of infant eating behavior, but it is only available in English and has not been validated in a Chilean sample.

What does your study add?

This study demonstrated good psychometric properties of the BEBQ Chilean version with a Chilean sample. Also, this tool could be used for the assessment of eating behavior in the Chilean health system.

Supplementary Information

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Supplementary file1 (DOCX 35 KB)

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Obregón, A.M., Valladares, M., Guzmán-Gutierrez, E. et al. Validation of the baby eating behaviour questionnaire in a Chilean population. Curr Psychol 43, 5377–5387 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04679-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-04679-x

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