Volume 70, Issue 5, May 2023, Pages 335-346Author links open overlay panel, , , , AbstractObjective

This study aimed to assess the validity and reliability of a self-administered screening questionnaire to detect deficiencies in the health habits of the adult population of the Canary Islands (Spain).

Design

The questionnaire initially included 30 items based on previous questionnaires and following the recommendations of the World Health Organization about healthy and unhealthy diet, screen time, physical activity, and sleep habits. It also included a section related to hygiene due to the importance that hygienic habits have in people's health.

Setting

The questionnaire was self-administered online.

Participants

Data was collected from 401 participants from the Canary Islands (age range: 18–73 years) who volunteered to fill in the questionnaire online.

Results

The questionnaire revealed adequate overall reliability indexes (Cronbach's α > .70, Mcdonald's ω > .70), and construct validity. Hierarchical linear regression analysis revealed age, sex, and income to be significantly (p < .05) related to adults’ health lifestyle habits in our population, sex and age explaining the majority of the variance. However, education and incomes were found non-significant (p > .05) when education was introduced into the model. Those results pointed out that older people and women show healthier lifestyle habits.

Conclusion

The questionnaire proved to be a brief, reliable, and valid tool to assess health lifestyle habits in adults in the Canary Islands. Furthermore, results pointed out that in future intervention studies with children, variables such as adults’ sex, age, and, to a lesser extent, monthly income should be taken into consideration.

ResumenObjetivo

Este estudio tiene como objetivo evaluar la validez y fiabilidad de un cuestionario de cribado autoadministrado para detectar deficiencias en los hábitos de salud de la población adulta de Canarias (España).

Diseño

El cuestionario incluía inicialmente 30 ítems basados en cuestionarios existentes y siguiendo las recomendaciones de la Organización Mundial de la Salud en relación con la alimentación, el tiempo dedicado a pantallas, la actividad física y los hábitos de sueño. También se incluyó un apartado relacionado con la higiene debido a la importancia que tienen los hábitos higiénicos en la salud de las personas.

Participantes

Se recopilaron datos de 401 participantes de las Islas Canarias (rango de edad: 18-73 años), que se ofrecieron como voluntarios para completar el cuestionario en línea.

Resultados

El cuestionario reveló índices de confiabilidad general adecuados (α de Cronbach >0,70, ω de Mcdonald >0,70) y validez de constructo. El análisis de regresión lineal jerárquica reveló que la edad, el sexo y los ingresos están significativamente (p < 0,05) relacionados con los hábitos de vida saludables de los adultos en nuestra población, con el sexo y la edad explicando la mayor parte de la varianza. Sin embargo, la educación y los ingresos no resultaron significativos (p > 0,05) cuando se introdujo la educación en el modelo. Los resultados señalaron que las personas mayores y las mujeres muestran hábitos de vida más saludables.

Conclusión

El cuestionario resultó ser una herramienta breve, fiable y válida para evaluar hábitos de vida saludables en adultos de Canarias. Además, los resultados señalaron que en futuros estudios de intervención con niños se deben tener en cuenta variables como el sexo de los adultos, la edad y, en menor medida, los ingresos mensuales.

Section snippetsParticipants

A total of 401 participants between 18 and 73 years old (Appendix A; Mage = 41.60, SD = 15.59; 73.8% females, 26.2% males) from The Canary Islands (Spain) volunteered to answer the questionnaire. Since the questionnaire was posted online, all the participants read the information note before deciding to fill in the questionnaire. In the information sheet, they were informed of the aim of the study, and they were assured of complete anonymity.

Materials

The Health Lifestyle Habits Screening Questionnaire for

Results

Participants’ demographic information and items’ descriptive statistics are showed in Table 1, Table 2, respectively. After scoring the items, item 27 (i.e., how many days a week do you shower or bathe?) showed high skewness and kurtosis indexes, above the recommended 3.00 and 10.00, respectively.33 Therefore, it was excluded from further analyses.

An IRT analysis was conducted and is presented in Table 3. Following Baker's recommendations,29 items with α parameters below .35 were considered to

Discussion

This study aimed to assess the validity and reliability of the Health Lifestyle Habits Screening Questionnaire for Adults (HLHSQ-A) in the Canary Islands. The benefits of online surveys, including speed and reduced cost, have been reported by other authors.34 Respondents often prefer them due to their flexibility, allowing them to answer at their own pace, thus increasing response rates.35 The lack of an interviewer reduces social desirability bias, with respondents giving more honest answers

Limitations

The data of the HLHSQ-A was obtained online by sharing the questionnaire through social media, emails, and La Universidad de La Laguna Virtual Campus. Therefore, the participants in the study are not a representative sample of the population of the Canary Islands. Also, there might be some bias in the data as the responses of those who lack access to the internet or do not have the knowledge to solve online surveys will not be captured, and because invitations to participate were distributed

Conclusion

The HLHSQ-A has proved to be a reliable and valid tool to screen adults’ health lifestyle habits in the Canary Islands. Furthermore, it includes items related to factors identified as mediating in weight increase and overall health for both children and adults based on the World Health Organization's recommendations7, 8, 25 and both the Krece Plus26 and KidMED27 questionnaires. The use of this questionnaire will allow us to easily detect adult population who do not have healthy habits. However,

Authorship

All authors contributed to the design of the study, carried out the study and contributed to the writing of the article. Data analysis was performed by S.C de León.

Ethical standards disclosure

This study was conducted according to the CEIBA (Research Ethics Committee) guidelines from La Universidad de la Laguna (https://viinv.ull.es/ceiba/). Participants were informed of the aim of the study and answered the questionnaire voluntarily.

Financial support

This project, entitled Obesity intervention in the Canary Islands, was funded by Fundación MAPFRE Guanarteme with YNM and LPQ as PIs. The funder did not play any role in the design of the study, data collection, writing of the manuscript or the decision to submit for publication.

Conflict of interest

None.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the members of the Learning Disabilities, Psycholinguistic and Information and Communication Technologies (DEAP&NT) research team from Universidad de La Laguna, for their help with tool design and data collection, and to all the participants for volunteering to take part in this study.

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