Development of a scale using nutrition attitudes for audience segmentation

This paper describes the development and psychometric evaluation of a scale using psychographics to segment an audience for a nutrition intervention. We used perceived benefits of and barriers to eating behavior change as the psychographic variables. We tested four versions of the scale in four separate and distinct samples using factor analysis as the method for defining the structure of each version of the scale. Cronbach alphas for the scales ranged from 0.64 to 0.87 for the benefit items and from 0.64 to 0.76 for the barrier items. The final version of the scale included 10 items measuring benefits and seven items measuring barriers, including several items that addressed perceived benefits of and barriers to eating a healthy diet to help prevent cancer. The final version of the scale, which was administered to 808 individuals, is presented. The scale has potential usefulness in several areas of interest to nutrition interventionists including market segmentation, designing and targeting intervention strategies, and applying theory to the measurement of eating behavior change.