An exploratory study of college students' attitudes toward dietary protein: Development of a dietary protein assessment survey instrument

The purpose of this exploratory study was to develop a survey to estimate college students’ attitudes towards dietary protein. The dimensionality of the attitude constructs in the Dietary Protein Assessment Survey (DPAS) instrument was explored in this study. The survey consisted of 64 questions, including 14 attitude questions. The dimensionality of the attitude constructs was explored by exploratory factor analysis (EFA) using principal axis factoring and a promax rotation. Internal consistency reliability was examined using Cronbach’s alpha. After removing items that did not factor, the EFA retained three factors and explained 73.9% of variance: human/environmental health (5 items), organic sources (2 items), and protein RDA (2 items). The Kaiser-Meyer-Oklin test (0.76) and Bartlett’s test (p <0.001) indicated data was appropriate for EFA. Attitudes towards protein appear to be multi-dimensional and correlated. Further testing is needed to confirm the hypothesized 3-factor model and to estimate test-retest reliability of this survey.