Development of an emoji-based self-report measurement tool to measure emotions elicited by foods in preadolescents

Emoji evolved as an attractive instrument to measure emotions in preadolescents due to their potential to express a wide range of emotions. However, the emotional meaning of emoji can be ambiguous and is often not universal across age groups, which has not been considered when developing emoji questionnaires. Hence, this research aimed to develop an emoji-based self-report measurement tool to measure emotional responses to food products in preadolescents. In total, 5 studies were conducted, and 454 preadolescents (aged 9–13 years) participated to develop the tool. First, preadolescents selected food-related emoji (Study 1, n = 96), then they evaluated their dimensional emotional meaning using projective mapping (Study 2, n = 162). They then evaluated the linguistic semantic meaning by describing emoji with emotion words (Check-All-That-Apply) (Study 3, n = 92) and vice versa (Study 4, n = 85). Finally, one-on-one interviews using a modified version of the Repertory Grid Method were conducted to investigate emoji more in depth (Study 5, n = 19). The findings resulted in 17 emoji pairs associated with specific linguistic semantic and dimensional (valence, power, and arousal) meanings. Based on this, we developed an emoji-based self-report measurement tool to measure emotions in response to food products with two suggested response formats, the CATA Emoji Pair Questionnaire and the Emoji Pair Rating Scale. Future research will test the discriminative ability of this tool over a wide range of food products. The questionnaire will allow for a better understanding of preadolescents’ affective responses to food and could be used in food innovation targeted at preadolescents to promote healthier food behaviors.