1995 Academic Press Limited attitudes relevant to theoretical frameworks such as the health belief model and the transtheoretical model of change have been developed (Kristal et al., 1990; Smith & Owen, 1992; Trenkner et al., 1990). For example, Glanz et al. (1993) have described measures of psychosocial factors influencing fat and fibre consumption, including items related to beliefs in the links between diet and disease, perceived benefits and barriers to behaviour change, social support, social norms, motivation and self- efficacy. This work holds the promise of leading to improved dietary modification programmes (McCann et al., 1990). However, health is clearly not the only factor people take into account when choosing their food, and a focus on health may lead to exclusive emphasis on a set of motives that are of limited significance for many people. It is therefore important to explore the role of other influences on food choice.
It has long been recognized that food availability and cultural factors are dominant in food selection. Cultural influences lead to di fferences in the habitual consumption of certain foods and in traditions of preparation, and in certain cases can lead to restrictions such as exclusion of meat and milk from the diet (Lau, Krondl & Coleman, 1984). Food is a focus of social interaction, and the consumption of ‘‘prestige’’ foods may become an index of social status (Sanjur, 1982). The system of provision, including food production and manufacture, marketing, delivery and sale, has been shown to have a major impact on what people eat (Fine & Leopold, 1993). At the individual level, taste or sensory appeal, likes and dislikes, and sheer habit are all relevant (Krondl & Lau, 1982; Rozin, 1984; Parraga, 1990). Taste may be particularly important in selection of high fat diets, since fats are responsible for the texture and aroma of many foods (Drenowski, 1992). On the other hand, ‘‘healthy’’ diets may be consumed for non-health reasons such as concern about appearance (Cockerham, Kunz & Lueschen, 1988). Weight control is a major determinant of food choice for individuals concerned about their body weight. The growth in environmental awareness over the past two decades has led to concerns about the use of natural ingredients and packaging that may have an impact on purchasing decisions. There is also evidence that stress and negative emotions may influence food selection and consumption (McCann, Warnick & Knopp, 1990; Wardle, 1987a). All these factors indicate that health is only one of many con- siderations relevant to food choice. More e ffective implementation of health pro- motion strategies may depend on the recognition of the status of health in comparison with other motives in the selection of food.
Multidimensional Measures of Food Choice
Efforts to develop multidimensional measures of factors related to food choice at the individual level, including both health and non-health motives, have been limited. Repertory grid approaches have been attempted, but these are time-con- suming and patterns tend not to be stable across individuals (Bell et al., 1981; Tuorila & Pangborn, 1988). Ratings of di fferent foods on dimensions such as pleasure, health, tradition, convenience, familiarity, prestige and price were described by Lau et al. (1984) and by Rappaport and coworkers (1992), but in neither case was a formal set of measures developed. A more systematic method was developed by Michela and Contento (1986) in a study of 5- to 13-year-old children. A series of foods were rated on a number of dimensions including healthfulness, taste, convenience and social influence. Substantial variations in the intraindividual correlations between
evaluative ratings and consumption of these same foods were found, and clusters of subjects characterized by different motivational patterns were identified.
This approach has been extended by Wardle (1993) who included ratings of liking (taste) and health for a range of foods in a study of mothers and their adult children. Two indices were constructed for each individual based on the correlation between liking ratings and consumption frequency (taste index) and between ‘‘healthiness’’ ratings and consumption frequency (health index). The taste index was consistently higher than the health index, although there was a good deal of variation across individuals in both. The health index was higher in older women than either their adult sons or daughters. The advantage of this method is that it circumvents the need for subjects to give introspective reports on their motives, but it has the drawback of being time-consuming and inappropriate for large-scale research.
More conventional questionnaire methods have been developed for the in- vestigation of eating disorders, including the restraint scale (Polivy, Herman & Warsh, 1978), the Three Factor Eating Questionnaire (Stunkard & Messick, 1985) and the Dutch Eating Behaviour Questionnaire (Van Strein et al., 1986). However, these measures are more concerned with cognitive restraints on food intake and the circumstances surrounding excessive consumption than with the factors influencing food choice. An 18-item Reasons for Eating Scale was devised by Harmatz and Kerr (1981), and responses from 110 students were factor analysed by Williams, Spence and Edelman (1987). Six factors emerged, highlighting the importance of a ffect on eating, as well as sensory appeal, habit and pleasure in food preparation. However, the questionnaire was developed for the investigation of obesity, and is limited in scope.
The Nutrition Attitudes Survey, a measure of attitudes relevant to low-fat diets, has been described by Hollis et al. (1986). Four factors emerged from the survey of 357 adult volunteers, and included ‘‘helpless and unhealthy’’, ‘‘food exploration’’, ‘‘meat preference’’ and ‘‘health consciousness’’. The helpless and unhealthy and meat preference factors were both associated with high meat consumption and with elevated low density lipoprotein concentration in the blood, while the health con- sciousness factor was associated with lower meat consumption. The helpless and unhealthy factor identified by Hollis et al. combines items about convenience (e.g. ‘‘many days, because I’m in a hurry, I eat whatever is handy’’), mood and a ffect (‘‘I eat more when I feel down’’), and low self-e fficacy (‘‘when it comes to food, I have no will-power’’). The health consciousness factor predominantly indexes willingness to change (‘‘to avoid heart disease, I would be willing to alter my eating habits’’) rather than concerns about health that currently govern food choice. The general
applicability of the measure is limited by the omission of items concerning sensory appeal and cost.
Evaluation of this literature suggests that the development of a multidimensional questionnaire to assess the perceived importance of di fferent factors in food choice might be valuable both in the investigation of food consumption and in health and consumer psychology more broadly. The assessment of di fferent factors within the same measure allows direct comparisons to be made about the relative importance of dimensions such as health, price, sensory appeal and convenience. We hypothesized that several distinct factors associated with food choice would be identified as well as the four listed above, since concern with weight control, the degree of familiarity of the food, and mood have all been cited as relevant in previous studies. In this paper, we describe the development of the measure and identification of dimensions
through factor analysis, its validation in an independent sample using confirmatory factor analysis, test–retest reliability over a 2- to 3-week interval, and associations with other variables such as sex, age, income, eating style, social desirability biases and health values. The relationship between responses to the questionnaire and patterns of food consumption is a separate issue related to the applications rather
than validation of the instrument, so will be presented elsewhere.
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