NUTRITIONAL LITERACY INSTRUMENT FOR BRAZILIAN CHILDREN AND ADOLESCENTS WITH DIABETES: PRE- TEST

Resumo

Nutritional literacy (NL) refers to the ability to understand and use nutritional information in everyday food choices, including the interpretation of labels, portion sizes, and dietary recommendations. In Brazil, there is an instrument designed to assess NL in individuals with diabetes, validated only for adults and elderly, called Nutritional Literacy among people with Diabetes (LND). However, there is a lack of validated instruments to assess NL in childr en and adolescents with diabetes, highlighting a gap in the literature. This motivated the proposal of a validation study of the LND for children and adolescents with diabetes. In this process, the LND was first adapted by a committee of experts, followed by a pre-test phase with the target audience to assess the understanding of the instrument's items. This abstract aims to present the results of this pre-test, which was developed through a methodological and qualitative -quantitative study. Data collection was carried out with diabetic patients aged eight to 19 years treated at the Interdisciplinary Diabetes Center (CENID) of the University of Marília (UNIMAR). A sample of 20 participants was selected. Patients who did not speak Brazilian Portuguese, who ha d vision and/or hearing problems or special educational needs that could interfere with the understanding of the instrument, as well as those without authorization from their guardians through the signing of the Informed Consent Form (ICF) and/or without the participant's assent through the signing of the Informed Assent Form (IAF), were excluded. The pre -test was conducted by trained interviewers, with individual application in an outpatient setting, where there was a computer with a slide presentation con taining instructions on how to answer and the 24 items of the LND instrument. The answers were recorded by the research interviewers. At the end, each participant underwent an interview to verify their understanding of the items, words, and completion of t he answers. The instrument was simple and quick to administer, with an average time of five to ten minutes, demonstrating good comprehension by the participants. Its interpretation is based on the number of correct answers in the 24 word associations, with those who correctly answered at least 18 associations (75%) being considered literate, according to the cutoff point originally established for the LND instrument. In the present study, of the total participants (n = 20), 65% were female, with a mean age of 13,6 ± 4 years. The average score obtained was 18.9 correct answers, ranging from 12 to 23, and 75% scored 18 points or higher, being considered literate according to the established cutoff point. Of the 24 items proposed in the LND, two of them had a p ercentage of correct answers of 40% or less. After the application, most reported no difficulties in understanding the instrument; however, 40% of the sample reported difficulties in understanding and associating some words. Given the satisfactory results, the LND for children and adolescents with diabetes, now called LND -Criadoc, was considered suitable for the subsequent stages and did not require modifications.