THE STUDY OF THE PSYCHOMETRIC PROPERTIES OF THE RUSSIAN- LANGUAGE ADAPTED VERSION «BABY EATING BEHAVIOUR QUESTINANAIRE»

Abstract

Due to the active study of anorexic and bulimic disorders in infancy and early childhood, there is currently a shortage of objective examination methods, including rating questionnaires. The aim of the study was to study the psychometric properties of the adapted version of the “Infant Eating Behavior Questionnaire” to assess the suitability of this test in the Russian- speaking population. 227 mothers were tested once, whose infants (100 boys, 127 girls, p=0.073, age 1–7 months) underwent a routine preventive outpatient examination in four district polyclinics of St. Petersburg in the period from September 2019 to May 2021. Method: exploratory factor analysis, the “maximum likelihood” method, varimax- rotation. Results: the Kaiser- Mayer- Olkin sample adequacy measure (0.655) and the Bartlett sphericity criterion (χ2=717.768, df=153, p=0.0001) showed conditional suitability of the data array for statistical analysis. The total cumulative variance was 53.469%. Based on the constructed graph of the eigenvalues of the principal components, the applied Kaiser and R. Kettel criteria, a 5-factor model was selected with the criterion “quality of fi t”, indicating the completeness of factorization (χ2=90.256, df=73, p=0.083). Thus, the 5-factor scale structure of the questionnaire, typical for the original version, was confi rmed. However, the components of the scales did not correspond to the original version. The scale “Food responsiveness” in the Russian version included only 4 original items (2, 8, 14, 16). The rest belong to the scale of “Enjoyment of food” (point 1 with a reverse calculation), the scale of “Satiety responsiveness” (points 7 and 13) and the scale of “Slowness in eating” (point 15). The “Enjoyment of food” scale included only one item present in the original version (17). The other two (12 and 18) in the original version belong to the “Food responsiveness” scale. The “Satiety responsiveness” scale contains only two points — 5 and 10. And only the latter refl ects the studied property. The “Slowness in eating” scale is represented by only two items (9 and 11), they both belong to the same scale in the original version. Of all the scales, only the “Slowness in eating” scale demonstrates acceptable statistical consistency (Cronbach’s α >0.7). The Cronbach’s α value of the “Food responsiveness” scale (>0.6) is in the range of questionable suitability. Other scales have a Cronbach’s α value of less than 0.6. The article discusses the reasons for the discrepancy between the components of the scales of the original version and the version obtained in this work, as well as the low degree of consistency of the questionnaire items within the selected scales.