Design and validation of a scale to assess self-regulation of eating habits in Mexican university students

Healthy eating habits promote wellness and prevent disease, however, despite the intention to change a bad habit, people often fail in theirattempts. This is due, since the performance of a change requires self-regulation skills that allow to observe, to evaluate and to take an action, in a constant motivation during the all the process; not only theknowledge about proper nutrition. The objective of this study was to design and validate an instrument to evaluatethe level of self-regulation for eating habits in college students. 62 items were written and evaluated by four expert judges. Two applications of the instrument were performed to 487 subjects. An unweighted least squares factor analysis whit direct Oblimin rotation was performed. The items saturated in more than one factor were discarded, as well as those who had a loading factor less than 0.40 or commonality less than 0.30. It was obtained an instrument integrated by 14 itemsgrouped into three factors, which explained the 46.9% of the variance: self-reaction, self-observation and self-evaluation. Cronbach's alpha yielded a high reliability coefficient (alpha = 0.874). The results show that the scale is a valid and reliable tool to measure of self-regulation of eating habits in college students. Its applications include the diagnostic of a population and the evaluation of interventions aimed toimproving nutrition based on the assumption that the processes of change require sustained self-regulation skills in people. protective effect against increases in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure.