A questionnaire to measure direct support professionals’ attitude towards healthy nutrition of people with intellectual disabilities

ABSTRACT

Background

Direct support professionals’ (DSPs') attitudes toward nutrition are important for supporting a healthy lifestyle of persons with intellectual disabilities. However, there are no instruments to measure it. The aim of this study was to compose a questionnaire and determine its internal validity.

Method

The previously validated Health Enhancing Physical Activity questionnaire was adapted into the Attitude of DSPs for Health Enhancing Nutrition (ADSP-HENU) and completed by 31 DSPs. The internal validity of the questionnaire was investigated by Cronbach’s Alpha and an exploratory non-parametric item response analysis (NIRT).

Results

The internal consistency by Cronbach’s Alpha was good (0.87, 95% CI [0.81–0.94]). NIRT showed monotonicity with wide confidence bounds and sufficient point polyserial correlations of the items. This indicates that each attributes to the overall measured attitude.

Conclusion

The internal validity of the ADSP-HENU is promising, and it can be used in daily practice for evaluation or adapting interventions to DSPs’ needs.

KEYWORDS:

• Attitude
• questionnaire
• direct support professionals
• nutrition
• intellectual disability

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Rianne Steenbergen for her support in the adaptation of the ADSP-HEPA to the ADSP-HENU and for providing feedback for the manuscript. In addition, we would like to thank the direct support professionals for participating in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Dutch organisation for health research and development, ZonMw, in the program “Gewoon Bijzonder, Nationaal Programma Gehandicapten” [grant number 80-84500-98-118]; “Innovatie Werkplaats Active Ageing van mensen met VB”, a collaboration between the Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Alfa-college, and care provider organisations for people with intellectual disabilities; no grant number is applicable.