OBJECTIVE: The objective was to validate a questionnaire that verifies food service customers´ attitude towards soybeans and its products. METHODS: A five-point Likert scale was used to develop the questionnaire. Validation was accomplished with customers of two food and nutrition units in the city of Rio de Janeiro, the first being a printing company and the second a clothing company. Cronbach´s alpha was used to measure internal reliability. The normality test was applied to the score matrices of each item. The identification of scores with non-Gaussian behavior indicated the need to use Spearman's correlation (r) to discriminate items. The exclusion criterion was correlations with negative or close to zero r. The external validation was established by confronting the matrices represented by the mean scores of each item. The standard deviation ratio was used to assess the relative agreement considering the association between the matrices which resulted from the administration of the questionnaires in both Food and Nutrition Units. RESULTS: A total of 45 and 90 clients from the two food and nutrition units respectively participated in the validation process. The procedure administered the printing company unit indicated the removal of three items from the twenty original items. The resulting questionnaire was administered in the clothing company unit, with no indication of item removal. The Cronbach's coefficient was 0.92 and 0.91, respectively showing that the instrument measures attitude reliably. The confrontation between the scores of each item and between the two food and nutrition units generated a deviation ratio of 0.99, which recommends the removal of item number six, regarding labeling, that is, if the information regarding soybeans is sufficiently clear. CONCLUSION: The questionnaire was validated, therefore it is an instrument capable of determining food service customers´ attitude towards soybeans and its products.
Food services; Soybeans; Questionnaire
