Translation and Cross-Cultural Adaptation of a Validated Questionnaire to Assess Cooking and Food Skills Among the Italian Population

To investigate the shift away from Mediterranean Diet model, based on the consumption of minimally processed foods, validated and tailored instruments are needed. In this study, we translated and cross-culturally adapted a validated questionnaire for the assessment of cooking and food skills (CS and FS). The process followed a 6 steps standardized protocol, supervised by a group of language, health, and statistics experts. A pilot test of the pre-final version was conducted among 40 volunteers (20 females, 20 males, aged 46.43±19.21). Six experts in the field of nutrition performed the content validity study of the final version. The Scale-level Content Validity Indexes based on average (S-CVI/Ave) and Universal Agreement (S-CVI/UA) were calculated (cutoff=0.83). A preliminary descriptive analysis on the pilot group answers was provided. Content validity coefficients S-CVI/Ave and S-CVI/UA were 0.98±0.07 and 0.91±0.29, respectively, and the internal consistency reliability was maintained in comparison to the original English version. The qualitative analysis of the pilot group responses showed an average CS of 60.53±26.68 (out of possible 98) and FS of 74.35±3.35 (out of possible 133). Overall, values recorded by males were significantly lower than those of females. Consumption of ready-to-eat ultra-processed foods is increasing, and culinary heritage of Mediterranean countries may be at risk. The translation and cross-cultural adaptation of a validated questionnaire to assess CS and FS, provided us with a tool suitable for the Italian population, essential to design observational and intervention studies.