By Nathalie Kliemann, Fiona Johnson and Helen Croker

Access to nutrition information is widespread and many people rely on sources such as newspapers, websites, magazines, and TV programmes. Some of the information is conflicting and misleading, and the sheer quantity can be overwhelming, leaving many people confused as to what is the current nutrition advice. In an attempt to understand how well UK adults understand nutrition information, in the 1990’s researchers at the Health Behaviour Research Centre developed a questionnaire to assess general nutrition knowledge (GNKQ) in the UK adult population. This measure has been widely used since then and is cited in over than 150 research papers, which have explored the relationship between nutrition knowledge and other factors, such as dietary intake, socio-economic status, and use of food labels. It has also been adapted for use in different populations and translated into other languages, including Turkish, Romanian, and Portuguese.

Why update it?

Since the GNKQ was developed 20 years ago,  there have been developments in our understanding of the links between diet and health, and big changes in the food supply including the introduction of new types of foods and processing methods. This has resulted in new advice regarding good nutrition, and the GNKQ needed updating to reflect the way we eat today and bring it into line with current recommendations. Our recent publication reported the development of a revised GNKQ, with four main sections measuring: knowledge of dietary recommendations; food groups; healthy food choices, and links between diet and ill health. We also conducted 4 studies to test how well the questionnaire measures nutrition knowledge in adults (tests of reliability and validity).

Main results

Our findings showed that the revised version of the GNKQ is a consistent, reliable and valid measure of nutrition knowledge, and that scores improve when people undertake nutrition training. It also showed some differences between people, as the GNKQ-R scores were higher among women, people with a degree, those with better health status and in younger adults. The sections can be administered individually to measure specific areas of nutrition knowledge. We concluded that the revised version of the GNKQ will be a useful tool to assess nutrition knowledge among the UK adult population, and identify groups of people who might benefit from nutrition education to navigate their way through the mass of nutrition information available.

Article link:

Kliemann N, Wardle J, Johnson F & Croker H. Reliability and validity of a revised version of the General Nutrition Knowledge Questionnaire. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2016, 1-7.

www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/ejcn201687a.pdf