Y. KATO ET AL.
regulation, the activity is consistent with other priorities in ones
lives. One believes that healthy eating behavior is an important
aspect of his/her life. SDT postulates that humans have a natu-
ral inclination toward physical and psychological health (Ryan
& Deci, 2000).
Healthy eating behavior is related to an individual’s self-de-
termined regulatory style (Pelletier, Dion, Angelo, Slovinec-
D’Angelo, & Reid, 2004). Contextual and cultural factors are
important in fostering the development of self-determined mo-
tives and may affect the quality of the self-regulatory process.
Understanding people’s motivation for regulating their eating
behavior might be useful for maintaining health and positive
eating behaviors. Pelletier et al. (2004) developed an instrument
to measure different forms of regulation of eating behaviors. It
was confirmed that the dietary behavior measures were related
to improvement in weight and blood lipid parameters. The
Regulations of Eating Behavior Scale (REBS) developed by
Pelletier et al. (2004) measures the different forms of motiva-
tion of maintaining healthy eating behavior as defined by SDT.
However, there is the possibility that it does not fit into the
context of Japanese eating culture and lifestyle. This study aims
1) to create a modified version of the REBS that is specifically
adapted to the Japanese culture and 2) to test the psychometric
properties of this new Japanese version. We hypothesized that
the modified version of the REBS reflects the eating culture and
life style of Japanese women.
Study 1
Method
Participants
A sample of 490 female Japanese undergraduate students
completed the Motivation for Healthy Eating Scale (MHES)
survey. The participants were aged between 18 and 38 years
(mean 19.7 ± 1.4 years). They were informed about the study,
and the research protocol was approved by the University Re-
view Board for human research in accordance with the ethical
standards outlined in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki. With the
permission of professors, the participants completed the ques-
tionnaire before the class. They did not receive any incentives
for participating in this study.
Measures
The MHES is based on the REBS scale originally developed
from a series of three studies examining how autonomous and
controlled forms of motivation for the regulation of eating be-
haviors were related to self-reported eating behaviors, and sus-
tained dietary behavior change (Pelletier et al., 2004). The scale
measures different forms of regulation as defined by SDT (Deci
& Ryan, 1985). The English version of the REBS includes 24
items and six subscales: Intrinsic motivation (4 items), Inte-
grated regulation (4 items), Identified regulation (4 items), In-
trojected regulation (4 items), External regulation (4 items), and
Amotivation (4 items). With the permission of the authors of
the REBS it was translated into Japanese and modified to suit
the Japanese culture. Three bilingual persons (two Japanese
native speakers and one English native speaker) collaborate to
translate. At first one forward translation was performed. Japa-
nese native speaker, health professional, familiar with termi-
nology of the area translated the original English items to
Japanese. Then an English native back-translated the Japanese
items to English. At last the items were checked to achieve
conceptual equivalence considering the Japanese culture by the
translators. On this process it was decided that for each sub-
scale, one item should be added, with the exception of external
regulation (for which two new items were added) and modified
the expression a little. The Japanese version was renamed as
Motivation for Healthy Eating Scale (MHES), since this better
reflects the content of the questionnaire. The 31-item version of
the MHES was psychometrically evaluated using a sample of
female undergraduate students as subjects. Items were pre-
sented in random order. Participants estimated the extent to
which an item corresponded to their motivation for healthy
eating behaviors in response to the question “Why are you eat-
ing healthy?” Each item was rated on a 7-point scale, ranging
from 1 (Does not correspond at all) to 7 (Corresponds very
well).
Statistical Analyses
To confirm the structure of the subscale items, principal
component analysis was performed for the MHES. Descriptive
statistics and internal consistency reliability using Cronbach’s
alpha were computed for all scales of the MHES. Internal con-
sistency is a measure of the extent to which items within a scale
correlate with each other to constitute a multi-item scale.
Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were established for all subscales,
and a value ≥ .70 was considered acceptable for internal consis-
tency.
Furthermore, to examine the consecutive structure of this
scale, the Pearson correlations between subscales were calcu-
lated.
Results
Preliminary analyses were performed to screen the data.
Values of kurtosis and skewness were first examined. All vari-
ables of MHES had kurtosis and skewness values below |2|. All
correlations were below .669.
The principal component analysis was performed. On intro-
jected and external regulation items, two components were
extracted. The items on the second component had different
meaning from the items on the first component. Hence, these
items were deleted. In the end, each subscale had a unidimen-
sional structure. Each factor explained about 50% of the vari-
ance. The factor loadings were above .45, and evaluation of the
internal consistency of the subscales was adequate. Cronbach’s
alphas ranged from .71 to .85. Item-total correlation ranged
from .55 to .85.
Table 2 shows the correlations between the subscales. The
adjacent subscales generally shows higher correlations (e.g.,
intrinsic motivation and integrated regulation, r = .734) than the
subscales farther apart (e.g., intrinsic motivation and identified
regulation, r = .677, or intrinsic motivation and amotivation, r =
−.158, p < .001).
Discussion
The univariate distribution was deemed acceptable. No mul-
ticollinearity or singularity was presented in the sample based
on the correlations (Tabachnick & Fidell, 1996).
Introjected regulation items were divided into two factors.
But the second items should not be considered healthy eating
behavior. In western countries dieting is considered a healthy
eating style. However, in Japan, young women’s dieting is con-
Copyright © 2013 SciRes. 137