Psychometric Validation of the health-related child body questionnaire (HRCBQ) to assess Chinese caregiver body perception

Aims: It is likely that caregivers tend to base their ideas on personal subjective experience, optimistic views and biased-cognition to the body questions raised. The HRCBQ was developed to assess caregiver’s perception of child body image. Methods: The HRCBQ consists of 17 health related child body questionnaire. Based on Stunkard et al. (1983)’s work, similar drawings for a child body figures, depicting a child aged 2-4 and a young adolescent aged 16-18 years old, ranging from very thin to very fat (1-9 scales). The psychometric performance of the HRCBQ was validated in several stages based on Rasch model, to identify items measuring biased-cognition, degree of items of biased-cognition, favorable biased-cognition items and demographics among caregivers. Results: 508 mothers and 1055 preschool teachers from 50 vary socio-economic background of kindergartens completed the HRCBQ. Eight out of 17 items had been identified as items of biased cognition; no misfit item was observed (critical range of 0.6 to 1.4). Among these 8 items, the easier bias item (item difficult= -1.52) and the most difficult bias tem (item difficult=-1.28) were also identified. Home-maker mothers, student-teachers and teachers from China had more bias than full time working mothers, practice-teachers and teachers from Hong Kong (p<0.001). Mothers with lesser education, poor incomes had more bias than the better groups (p<0.001). Conclusions: The results of psychometric analyses confirmed that the HRCBQ had consisted 8 items of biased cognition scientifically. More comprehensive items should be further developed to confirm the HRCBQ and its impact on socio-cultural responsive reliability.