[Instrument for assessment of best practices in school food and nutrition units: from design to validation].

The scope of this study was to elaborate and validate an assessment tool for Best Practices in School Food and Nutrition Units. For this purpose a survey was conducted in the city of Santos (São Paulo - Brazil), in two stages: 1) Preparation of a Checklist for Best Practices in School Food and Nutrition Units (BPAE checklist). 2) Validation of the BPAE checklist. This checklist was applied in 76 public schools along with two other reference checklists. Sensitivity and specificity were estimated using the Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) Curve and the checklist was evaluated by application of the Likert scale. The thematic groups received weights to calculate the percentage of adequacy. After the application of the checklists in schools, the area under the curve value of 0.79 was found for the SS-196 checklist and 0.85 for the 542/2006 administrative checklist. These values indicate good suitability of the BPAE checklist to identify inadequacies, and it also received a positive assessment from the school food nutritionists. It proved that the checklist will assist in decision-making to ensure quality control. Once the BPAE checklist has been fully tested and validated it should prove an important tool for quality control in school nutrition.