Nutrition and Behavior Attitudes Scale in Bariatric Surgery Patients

Abstract

Aim: This study was held to develop a scale measuring the attitudes of people to change their habits on nutrition and physical activity after bariatric surgery. Via this scope this scale is required to be applied before the surgery for defining the pertaining status of individuals on changing their nutrition behavior and lack of knowledge about the nutrition process after the surgery. Reliability and validation analysis were done to develop the scale. Subjects and Methods: In this study 157 obese people who applied to a hospital for bariatric surgery were included. Test retest was performed on 30 randomly selected participants out of 157. Reliability for this scale determined internal consistency by Cronbach Alpha and validity by factor analysis. Results: The Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient was found to be 0.937. As a result of the exploratory factor analysis, the scale items showed 5 factors as best distribution. Factors are named under five headings “Short-term compliance to post-operative recommendation”, “Body weight-diet and exercise relationship”, “Operation-diet-exercise relationship”, “Long term compliance with post-operative recommendation”, and “Weight loss expectation from surgery” . The factor loadings of the items were found to be between 0.49 and 0.81. Factors explain 59.65% of the variance. As a result of the factor analysis, Kaiser-Meyer Olkin coefficient was 0.742 and Bartlett test result showed was found significant (χ2=818.800; p<0.001). Conclusion: Consequently, a 5-factor scale consisting of 18 items was developed. This scale is the first scale developed on this subject.