Subjects
This cross-sectional study was performed on students of Urmia University of Medical Sciences located in northwest Iran in academic year of 2018–2019. The inclusion criteria for the study are females and males who studied at Urmia University of Medical Sciences, and students’ voluntary participation in the study and obtaining written consent from the students and University principals for the students’ participation in the study. The lack of willingness to continue participating in the study and not signing the informed consent form were considered as exclusion criteria.
According to the results of the study of Yar Mohammadi and et al. [31], with a 95% confidence interval and an error of 0.05, using the formula for estimating the proportion in society, taking into account the 10% drop rate, sample size was estimated 330students. A randomized stratified sampling method was used to select the study samples. The study sample was randomly selected from each of the strata based on the share of the total sample.
Questionnaire
The data gathering tool in this study was a self-reported questionnaire (Additional file 1), which was designed according to the existing measures in scientific literature [32,33,34]. The study instrument was translated from English to Persian using a standard forward-backward translation technique [35]. The original instrument was translated by a bilingual specialist. The Persian version was then retranslated into English by two independent bilingual professionals to assess retention of the original meaning in the source language. Subsequently, translators worked separately in the translation process and then prepared the final version of the Persian translation. Content validity of The Persian version of questionnaire was evaluated by a panel of experts such as 3 nutrition specialists, 3 health education specialists, and 2 instrument designers. After receiving their comments, crucial revisions were conducted in the study tool. Finally, validity of the study instrument was confirmed. The present questionnaire including four following sections:
General characteristics
The first part contains personal information such as age, gender, weight, height, field of study, student education, father’s education, mother’s education, father job, mother’s job, ethnicity, marital status, participating in nutrition educational classes, students’ monthly income, family’s monthly income, housing status, information resource for healthy nutrition.
Constructs of the TPB
The second part contains questions about the constructs of the theory of planned behavior (attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control and behavioral intention). In general, attitudes, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control of students were measured using indirect items. The internal reliability of all subscales of the TPB variables was good, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.852.
Attitude toward fast food use
The attitude of the people was evaluated using 28 indirect items (14 items of behavioral beliefs, 14 items of expectations evaluation) based on five-point the Likert scale (from strongly agree to strongly disagree) or (from very important to not at all important), and the score of each item varied from 1 to 5. The minimum and maximum score for the attitude subscale was 14 and 350, respectively. The internal reliability of attitude subscale was good, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.778.
Subjective norm
Subjective norms of students were measured by 10 indirect items (5 items of normative beliefs, 5 items of motivation to comply) based on five-point the Likert scale (from strongly agree to strongly disagree) or (from very important to not at all important), and the score of each item varied from 1 to 5. The minimum and maximum score for the subjective norm subscale was 5 and 125, respectively. The internal reliability of subjective norm subscale was good, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.726.
Perceived behavioral control
Perceived behavioral control were measured by 18 indirect items (9 items of control beliefs, 9 items of perceive power) based on five-point the Likert scale (from strongly agree to strongly disagree) or (from extremely difficult to extremely easy), and the score of each item varied from 1 to 5. The minimum and maximum score for the perceived behavioral control subscale was 9 and 225, respectively. The internal reliability of subscale of perceived behavioral control was good, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.815.
Behavioral intention
Behavioral intention was evaluated by 8 items based on five-point the Likert scale (from strongly agree to strongly disagree), and the score of each item varied from 1 to 5. The minimum and maximum score for the Behavioral intention subscale was 8 and 40, respectively. The internal reliability of behavioral intention subscale was good, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.821.
Knowledge of participants
And the third and fourth parts are items related to food knowledge and fast food behavior. Students’ knowledge of fast food was evaluated by 14 items, and the score of each item varied from 0 to 2. The minimum and maximum score for the knowledge subscale was 0 and 28, respectively. The internal reliability of students’ knowledge was good, with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.783.
Fast food use
Students’ fast food consumption was assessed by frequency of use in a past month. The term “Fast food” was defined as hamburgers, doughnuts, hot dog, snack, pizza, fried chicken and fried potatoes. The frequency of fast food use was analyzed for each food category.
Statistical analyses
All statistical analyzes were performed using SPSS 16.0 software. Descriptive statistics methods such as frequencies, means and standard deviations were used along with independent t and χ2 tests. Pearson correlation test was used to investigate the relationship between TPB variables with intent to use fast food and the real use of fast food. Multiple regressions were used for further analysis.
https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-022-12696-x