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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Med.
Sec. Family Medicine and Primary Care
Volume 11 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2024.1383825

Validity of a four-item questionnaire in French assessing attachment to meat Running headline: four-item meat attachment questionnaire

Provisionally accepted
Paul Sebo Paul Sebo 1*Benoit Tudrej Benoit Tudrej 2Augustin Bernard Augustin Bernard 1Bruno Delaunay Bruno Delaunay 1Alexandra Dupuy Alexandra Dupuy 1Claire Malavergne Claire Malavergne 1Hubert Maisonneuve Hubert Maisonneuve 1
  • 1 University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
  • 2 Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Lyon, Rhône-Alpes, France

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The 16-item Meat Attachment Questionnaire (MAQ-16) assesses emotional and cognitive attachment to meat across four dimensions: hedonism, affinity, entitlement, and dependence. Recently validated in French, we aimed to develop and validate a shorter, four-item version (MAQ f -4) to reduce participant burden.In this 2023 observational study in the Rhône-Alpes region, 919 primary care patients were invited to complete the French MAQ-16 (MAQ f -16). Classical test theory guided the development of the MAQ f -4, and Spearman's correlation coefficients assessed its correlation with the MAQ f -16 (dimension and overall scores). We also evaluated the diagnostic performance of the MAQ f -4 for identifying patients with high meat attachment (MAQ f -16 score > 60).Results: A total of 822 patients participated (65.3% women; median age = 52; participation rate = 89.5%). The MAQ f -4 showed strong correlations with the MAQ f -16 (rho = 0.83 for hedonism, 0.77 for affinity, 0.70 for entitlement, 0.79 for dependence, and 0.86 for the overall score, all p-values < 0.001). A score of 15 on the MAQ f -4 (sensitivity = 91%, NPV = 96%) effectively excluded patients with low meat attachment, while a score of 17 (specificity = 96%, PPV = 84%) accurately identified those with high attachment.The MAQ f -4 demonstrated strong correlation with the MAQ f -16 and accurately identified high attachment to meat. It may serve as a useful tool in research and clinical settings, though further validation is required before broad implementation in French primary care.

    Keywords: Attachment to meat, french, MAQ, Meat attachment questionnaire, Primary Care, Validation

    Received: 08 Feb 2024; Accepted: 23 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Sebo, Tudrej, Bernard, Delaunay, Dupuy, Malavergne and Maisonneuve. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Paul Sebo, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.