RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF THE ITALIAN SMART QUESTIONNAIRE (SMART-Q)

Abstract

SMART is the acronym for Sports, Meals, Activities, Relationships and Technologies. The SMART questionnaire (SMART-Q) has been developed following the Civil Educational Approach by a multidisciplinary team of researchers from Italy and United Kingdom Universities. The questionnaire aims to identify the adolescents at a higher risk of unhealthy behaviours (defined as situations in which adolescents can be capped with criminal behaviours, drug or technology addictions, bullying, and school dropout). Previously studies have used SMART-Q however, its validity and reliability have never been completed. Hence, the following study aims to explain the structure of the SMART-Q and its domains and investigates the questionnaire reliability and validity with repeated measures in a young cohort who took part in the Sport Senza Frontiere over the summer of 2021. The construct validation was conducted through Exploratory Factor Analysis, obtaining the values for Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin index (0.941) and Bartlett’s test (χ2 = 3813.903, Df = 325, p ≤ 0.001), which indicates its suitability for factor analysis. Exploratory Factor Analysis was completed with the principal component method to estimate the factor loadings and specificity, using the varimax rotation method. The results indicate that all questions presented moderate reliability. In conclusion, the proposed instrument is valid and applicable, meeting all the parameters necessary for its validation. However, it should be additionally implemented to monitor the correlation between items and its reliability. So it is recommended to use the SMART-Q with caution. Finally, the complete questionnaire with scoring values is reported at the end of the document in the Appendix.