AB058. From wok to wellness: validating a reliable tool to measure healthy cooking behavior in Malaysia
Abstract

AB058. From wok to wellness: validating a reliable tool to measure healthy cooking behavior in Malaysia

Prem Ananth Palaniappan1, Ai Kah Ng1, Farizah Mohd Hairi1, Hazreen Abdul Majid1,2

1Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; 2School of Health Rehabilitation Sciences, Health Sciences University, Parkwood Campus, Bournemouth, UK

Background: Unhealthy dietary habits, driven by a shift from home-cooked meals to dining out, are contributing significantly to Malaysia’s rising burden of non-communicable diseases. Food handlers play a critical role in shaping the dietary quality outside home through their cooking behavior. However, validated instruments to assess healthy cooking behavior among food handlers are scarce. This study aimed to validate the Healthy Cooking Index in Malay (HCI-M) to assess healthy cooking behavior among Malaysian food handlers.

Methods: The tool underwent a rigorous adaptation process involving local contextualization of cooking practices, content validation, forward-backward translation by experts, face validity, test-retest, and principal component analysis (PCA) among the study population. Eligible participants were adult food handlers involved in cooking, proficient in Malay, recruited through purposive sampling from food premises at Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur and Kota Marudu, Sabah. Fast food and bakery establishments were excluded. Participants completed a self-administered questionnaire. Data were analyzed through Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) and FACTOR statistical software.

Results: The HCI-M demonstrated good item-level content validity index (I-CVI) and excellent scale-level content validity index (S-CVI) (I-CVI =0.86 and S-CVI =0.96, respectively). The items were well-understood by the target group and revised further after debriefing. Test-retest reliability showed acceptable to excellent agreement across items (kappa >0.40). PCA confirmed three meaningful components (eigenvalue >1) with all items loading above 0.4, and total variance explained was 53%.

Conclusions: The HCI-M is a valid and reliable tool to assess healthy cooking behavior among Malaysian food handlers. It will guide in designing effective interventions to improve and monitor healthy cooking behavior among food handlers, which can potentially reduce diet-related disease risk at the population level.

Keywords: Food handlers; healthy cooking behavior; Healthy Cooking Index (HCI); Malaysia; non-communicable diseases

Footnote

Conflicts of Interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Open Access Statement: This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits the noncommercial replication and distribution of the article with the strict proviso that no changes or edits are made and the original work is properly cited (including links to both the formal publication through the relevant DOI and the license). See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

doi: 10.21037/jphe-26-ab058
Cite this abstract as: Palaniappan PA, Ng AK, Mohd Hairi F, Abdul Majid H. AB058. From wok to wellness: validating a reliable tool to measure healthy cooking behavior in Malaysia. J Public Health Emerg 2026;10:AB058.

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