Determining the nutrition knowledge of junior athletes in Austria
- 15.09.2014
- English Articles
- Gertrude Horvath
- Nanna L. Meyer
- Manuela Konrad
- Erich Müller
Peer-reviewed | Manuscript received: May 15, 2013 | Revision accepted: June 04, 2014
Translation and adaptation of the “Adolescent Sport Nutrition Knowledge Questionnaire”
Introduction
There is hardly an area in which the consequences of correct or faulty nutrition can be more rapidly recognised than in sport [1]. However, studies with various questionnaires have shown that athletes - particularly young athletes - know very little about nutrition [2, 3].
On the other hand, it has been shown that there are positive correlations between the level of physical activity and nutritional knowledge [3, 4] and between nutritional education and nutritional knowledge [5], which suggests that much more emphasis should be laid on nutrition and nutritional education for young athletes. However, the essential instruments are missing.
Summary
It has been found in practice that adolescents know very little about sports nutrition. It has therefore been attempted to develop a validated German language questionnaire, that could be used to identify the greatest deficits and to show where additional information must be supplied. The questionnaire was developed on the basis of a questionnaire from the USA. Five experts in sport nutrition then helped to validate this in the German speaking area. The reliability was checked with the test-retest method, in which 100 young athletes (15.9 ± 1.4 years) were tested. Cronbach‘s alpha correlation coefficient for the whole questionnaire was 0.825. The overall knowledge score was 36 (± 7.9) of 63 correctly answered questions, corresponding to 57 %. It was concluded that the developed questionnaire is a good instrument for measuring nutritional knowledge.
Keywords: Sports nutrition, nutritional knowledge, adolescents, nutritional education, questionnaire development
