Impact of cooking competence on satisfaction with food-related life: Construction and validation of cumulative experience & knowledge scales

Research into consumers' cooking competences mostly focuses on the nutritional qualities of the resulting meals and relies on non-cumulative measures of cooking skills. In response, the current article reports on several studies designed to construct and validate a set of cumulative scales to measure consumers' cooking knowledge and experience as well as the link to consumers' food-related life satisfaction. Expert interviews, focus groups, and previous research establish the themes and potential scale items. Then two surveys with representative samples of Danish food consumers serve to identify the critical scale items and assess the reliability and validity of the scales. The results demonstrate that the constructed knowledge and experience scales are cumulative, have high levels of reliability, and indicate the positive effects of such knowledge and experience on consumers' food-related life satisfaction.