Design and construction of the Maternal Self-efficacy Scale for the Prevention of Excess Weight

Abstract The objective of the present study was to design, validate and obtain the reliability of the Maternal Self-efficacy Scale for the Prevention of Overweight. From an exploratory research where the role of mothers in childhood obesity was studied, 25 items were written, after an assessment by a panel of judges. The validation was carried out twice with different samples. The first one were 400 mothers (Mage = 33.1, SD = 6.8) of children aged 3-6 years (M = 5.0, SD = 0.6) and 18 items were obtained, divided into four factors: Food, Programming, Solutions, and Prohibition, with a Cronbach’s alpha (α) between .62 - .88 and omega (ω) coefficients of .76 - .94. The second validation was with 369 participants, 97% were mothers (Medad = 32.4, DS = 7.9) of children aged 3-6 years (M = 5.0, DS = 0.6) and 3% were grandmothers. The scale was one-dimensional composed by 11 items, with α = .90, ω = .92, and explaining 52% of the variance that evaluates the perceived self-efficacy in the prevention of body weight excess. The proposed scale showed to be suitable and, therefore, its use will promote a greater understanding of childhood obesity.