The WillTry Scale<\/strong> is an interviewer-administered psychometric instrument developed to evaluate children\u2019s self-reported willingness to try diverse fruits and vegetables, encompassing both familiar (common) and unfamiliar (novel) varieties. Developed originally by Jessica L. Thomson and colleagues (2010)<\/a> to support nutritional surveillance and intervention programming within health-disparate pediatric populations\u2014notably in the rural Lower Mississippi Delta\u2014the scale addresses a pivotal behavioral precursor to dietary variety and nutritional adequacy in youth aged 5 to 14 years. The standard operationalized battery consists of 22 target produce items categorized into fruit and vegetable domains, scored across a three-point Likert-type response scale: Wouldn't try<\/em> (0 points), Would maybe try<\/em> (1 point), and Would try<\/em> (2 points). This yield generates a cumulative composite score ranging from 0 to 44, alongside distinct subscale scores reflecting domain-specific willingness (Fruit Willingness vs. Vegetable Willingness) and familiarity dimensions (Common Produce vs. Novel Produce). Psychometric evaluations demonstrate strong internal consistency reliability, with Cronbach\u2019s alpha values typically ranging from α = .84 to .91 across composite and subscale iterations, as well as satisfactory test-retest reliability across multi-week intervals (intraclass correlation coefficients ranging from .65 to .78). Criterion-related and predictive validities have been rigorously confirmed using objective, weighed plate-waste metrics from direct snack-feeding observations, verifying that children expressing higher self-reported willingness consume a statistically significant higher percentage of offered produce. By bridging subjective food neophobia assessment and actual consumption behavior, the WillTry Scale serves as an empirically robust evaluative tool for pediatric obesity prevention initiatives, school nutrition trials, and community public health interventions<\/span>.<\/p>\n WillTry Scale, pediatric nutrition, food neophobia, fruit and vegetable consumption, dietary assessment, willingness to try, child feeding behavior, nutritional psychometrics, Lower Mississippi Delta, obesity prevention<\/p>\n The WillTry Scale was developed by an interdisciplinary team of behavioral scientists, clinical nutritionists, and biostatisticians affiliated with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and regional academic medical centers:<\/p>\n Pediatric overweight and childhood obesity<\/a> represent severe public health crises with far-reaching physiological, metabolic, and psychosocial sequelae. Epidemiological research routinely underscores that a dietary pattern characterized by adequate consumption of nutrient-dense fruits and vegetables confers substantial protective effects against chronic metabolic diseases, including type 2 diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular dysfunction, hypertension, and systemic low-grade inflammation. Guidelines published by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)<\/a> and the World Health Organization (WHO)<\/a> underscore that establishing diverse produce consumption during middle childhood is vital for long-term health trajectories. However, achieving recommended produce intake remains difficult, particularly among socioeconomically disadvantaged and rural populations where food insecurity, dietary deserts, and limited exposure converge to restrict dietary diversity.<\/p>\n A primary psychological and behavioral bottleneck governing produce consumption in children is the reluctance or refusal to taste unfamiliar or sensorially challenging foods, a phenomenon intimately connected to food neophobia<\/a> and pickiness. While general neophobia instruments exist, they frequently rely upon retrospective parental reports or evaluate abstract personality-like traits rather than concrete behavioral intentions. Such proxy methodologies are prone to informant bias, social desirability, and inaccurate maternal or paternal estimation of a child's willingness when separated from the domestic dining context. The WillTry Scale<\/strong> was purposefully engineered as a child-centered, interviewer-administered instrument that directly measures a child\u2019s willingness to try specific, visualizable fruits and vegetables.<\/p>\n The primary clinical and research purposes of the WillTry Scale include:<\/p>\n The WillTry Scale operationalizes the core psychological construct of behavioral willingness to ingest<\/em> within the domain of pediatric ingestive behavior. Behavioral willingness, rooted in the Prototype Willingness Model<\/a>, differs subtly yet critically from behavioral intention. Whereas an intention<\/em> entails a premeditated, deliberate plan to enact a target behavior, willingness<\/em> reflects an individual's openness to engaging in a behavior when provided with an immediate risk-free or low-cost opportunity within an enabling environment. In young children whose dietary selections are predominantly constrained by adult provision, behavioral willingness constitutes the most ecologically valid cognitive antecedent of actual food tasting.<\/p>\n The construct measured by the WillTry Scale is multi-faceted, reflecting interactive cognitive, affective, sensory, and familiarity dynamics. It is organized into distinct subscale dimensions:<\/p>\n Fruit willingness captures a child's willingness to try items characterized by natural sweetness, sucrose\/fructose composition, and relatively high juiciness (e.g., apples, bananas, strawberries, watermelon, and kiwifruit). Innate human evolutionary biology favors sweet gustatory inputs because sweetness historically signaled non-toxic, calorie-dense sustenance. Consequently, willingness scores for fruits systematically exhibit higher baseline means and lower refusal variance than vegetable scores. Diminished fruit willingness typically signals profound, generalized sensory defensiveness or heightened severe food neophobia.<\/p>\n Vegetable willingness quantifies openness toward items that frequently feature bitter notes, fibrous or astringent mouthfeels, sulfurous aromas, and low caloric density (e.g., broccoli, peas, asparagus, zucchini, and eggplant). Evolutionarily, bitter and astringent flavors served as warning indicators of plant-derived alkaloids and phytotoxins. As children possess higher densities of fungiform taste buds, their sensitivity to bitter chemical compounds (such as 6-n-propylthiouracil, or PROP) is heightened. Vegetable willingness thus acts as an informative barometer of a child\u2019s susceptibility to sensory rejection and contextual food pickiness.<\/p>\n Within both fruit and vegetable categories, the scale differentiates between common<\/em> foods (ubiquitously available items such as carrots, potatoes, apples, and bananas) and novel<\/em> foods (produce that is culturally, geographically, or socioeconomically rare within the target demographic, such as dragonfruit, papaya, kiwifruit, and eggplant). The novel food dimension isolates acute food neophobia\u2014the fear of the unfamiliar\u2014while the common food dimension identifies entrenched selective or picky eating, wherein a child refuses even heavily advertised, culturally normative items that they have likely encountered repeatedly.<\/p>\n The development and interpretation of the WillTry Scale rest upon an intersection of developmental psychology, behavioral economics, evolutionary anthropology, and nutritional epidemiology. Three foundational frameworks govern its architecture:<\/p>\n Originating from the seminal theoretical work of Paul Rozin (1976) and later expanded by Patricia Pliner (1994), the omnivore's dilemma<\/em> posits that omnivorous species must balance two opposing drives: neophilia<\/em> (an exploratory interest in novel food sources necessary for meeting diverse micronutrient demands) and neophobia<\/em> (a cautious reluctance or fear of unverified substances that may contain lethal toxins). In human development, food neophobia exhibits a distinct ontogenetic trajectory. It is minimal during infancy and early complementary feeding, peaks sharply between 2 and 6 years of age\u2014coinciding with increased locomotor independence from parental supervision\u2014and gradually diminishes across middle childhood as cognitive appraisal and experience mature.<\/p>\n The WillTry Scale operationalizes this developmental transition. In populations characterized by limited dietary diversity, such as rural, low-income areas, the neophobic response often remains elevated because repeated positive taste exposures\u2014the primary experiential mechanism that down-regulates neophobic fear through learned safety\u2014are structurally absent.<\/p>\n Formulated by Frederick X. Gibbons and Meg Gerrard, the Prototype Willingness Model acknowledges that much of youth health behavior does not stem from rational, reasoned action pathways, but rather through reactive, opportunistic decision-making pathways. The scale captures this intuitive reaction: when presented with a concrete visual prompt (e.g., a photograph of sliced kiwi or fresh broccoli), the child reacts to the behavioral prospect of tasting it. The 3-point categorical ladder (Wouldn't try<\/em> → Would maybe try<\/em> → Would try<\/em>) maps directly onto the spectrum of willingness, tracing the child's transition from outright avoidance, to ambivalent contemplation, to behavioral readiness.<\/p>\n Albert Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory<\/a> emphasizes reciprocal determinism: cognitive beliefs, environmental exposures, and overt behavior continuously interact. Research by Leann Birch and colleagues demonstrates that children require between 8 to 15 repeated, non-coercive sensory exposures to a novel food before familiarity is established and affective preference shifts toward acceptance. In the WillTry paradigm, photographic prompts establish cognitive familiarity without imposing immediate postingestive pressure, accurately mapping the child's current stage of behavioral readiness along the exposure continuum.<\/p>\n The WillTry Scale has been subjected to empirical validity evaluations across several pediatric cohorts, most prominently within the Lower Mississippi Delta Nutrition Intervention Research Initiative (LMD NIRI) programs in Arkansas and Mississippi (Thomson et al., 2010).<\/p>\n A challenge in pediatric psychometrics is the reliance on proxy reports or self-report recall methods that suffer from severe social desirability and memory biases. The validation of WillTry addressed this by using direct, weighed plate-waste feeding sessions as the external criterion. In experimental validation studies:<\/p>\n Construct validity was evaluated by examining relationships between WillTry scores and established parent-reported and child-reported eating dimensions:<\/p>\n Discriminant validity was established by comparing child responses to non-food behavioral items and demographic controls (such as sibling count), which showed non-significant correlations with willingness metrics ($r < .08, p > .30$<\/span>). Furthermore, the scale discriminated well between high-sugar common fruits (exhibiting ceiling effects in willingness) and novel bitter vegetables (exhibiting wide individual variance).<\/p>\n The reliability profile of the WillTry Scale demonstrates robust psychometric stability and internal consistency across diverse school-aged demographics:<\/p>\n Across validation studies conducted by Thomson et al. (2010) involving pediatric samples in Arkansas (AR) and Mississippi (MS1, MS2), internal consistency was computed using Cronbach's coefficient alpha (α):<\/p>\n Temporal stability was evaluated across a 6-week test-retest interval among summer camp cohorts who received no interim nutritional desensitization. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) for the total WillTry composite score was ICC = .74<\/strong> (95% CI [.63, .82]), demonstrating acceptable-to-good stability over an extended developmental timeframe. Subscale test-retest correlations yielded ICCs of .71 for fruits and .68 for vegetables, indicating that in the absence of targeted intervention, children's reported willingness to try produce remains remarkably stable across middle childhood<\/span>.<\/p>\n The structural dimensionality of the WillTry Scale has been explored using both Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)<\/a> and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)<\/a> to determine whether willingness to try produce operates as a single global trait or a multidimensional structure.<\/p>\n Initial principal axis factoring with promax (oblique) rotation supported a clear two-factor conceptualization separating items along botanical and sensory lines:<\/p>\n A secondary hierarchical analysis further distinguished items across a crossed familiarity axis, yielding a four-factor model: Common Fruits, Novel Fruits, Common Vegetables, and Novel Vegetables. The correlation between the latent Fruit and Vegetable factors remained moderate ($r = .42$<\/span> to $.51$<\/span>), supporting the use of both distinct subscale scores and a broad composite score.<\/p>\n CFA conducted on subsequent independent samples verified the superiority of the two-factor correlated model (Fruit vs. Vegetable) over a single-factor unidimensional model. Standard structural equation modeling indices confirmed good model fit:<\/p>\n Standardized factor loadings across items were robust, ranging from λ = .44 to .78 for vegetable items and λ = .41 to .72 for fruit items, confirming that all 22 target foods contribute reliably to their respective latent constructs<\/span>.<\/p>\n The WillTry Scale was developed in 2006–2008 and formally published in peer-reviewed literature in 2010<\/strong> by Jessica L. Thomson and co-authors under the auspices of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS). Because it was developed through federally funded research conducted by USDA-ARS scientists, the core assessment instrument is considered to be in the public domain and may be utilized for non-commercial academic, educational, and clinical research purposes without licensing fees.<\/p>\n Investigators wishing to adapt the tool are advised to maintain standardized photographic stimulus protocols and cite the primary validation paper (Thomson et al., 2010<\/a>). Inquiries regarding original high-resolution stimulus materials, administration manuals, or regional adaptations may be directed to the corresponding author, Dr. Jessica L. Thomson, at the USDA-ARS.<\/p>\nKeywords<\/h2>\n
Authors<\/h2>\n
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Purpose<\/h2>\n
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Psychological Construct<\/h2>\n
1. Fruit Willingness Subscale<\/h3>\n
2. Vegetable Willingness Subscale<\/h3>\n
3. Common vs. Novel Produce Dimensions<\/h3>\n
Theoretical Framework<\/h2>\n
1. Omnivore\u2019s Dilemma and Evolutionary Food Neophobia<\/h3>\n
2. The Prototype Willingness Model (PWM)<\/h3>\n
3. Social Cognitive Theory and Familiarity Mechanics<\/h3>\n
Validity<\/h2>\n
Predictive and Criterion-Related Validity<\/h3>\n
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Construct and Convergent Validity<\/h3>\n
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Discriminant Validity<\/h3>\n
Reliability<\/h2>\n
Internal Consistency Reliability<\/h3>\n
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Test-Retest Reliability and Temporal Stability<\/h3>\n
Factor Analysis<\/h2>\n
Exploratory Factor Structure<\/h3>\n
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Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Model Fit<\/h3>\n
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Instrument \/ Measurement Tool<\/h2>\n
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Permissions & Fee and Test Year<\/h2>\n
References<\/h2>\n
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13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)<\/h2>\n