“Zero” Obesity Questionnaire (ZOQ) – the development and validation of a novel questionnaire to assess nutrition knowledge, food behaviours and self image in schoolchildren

Abstract

Childhood Obesity is a public health priority1-3, with an estimated prevalence of overweight in children and adolescents of about 30%3-5. It has adverse psychological, social and health consequences in childhood and later in life, especially as far as cardiovascular disease, metabolic syndrome and associated mortality, are concerned6,7. Understanding how best to prevent it, remains a research question6. However the design of potentially effective interventions is hampered by the general lack of good-quality data available8,9. There is no available validated methodology that simultaneously assesses nutrition knowledge, food behaviours and self image in school age Portuguese children. The Zero Obesity Questionnaire (ZOQ) was developed to produce a novel, valid, simple, quick and engaging method of accurately assessing 3 sections: nutrition knowledge (NK), food behaviours (FB) and self image (SI) in children, set within a user-friendly interface.