Validation of a self-completion measure of breakfast foods, snacks and fruits and vegetables consumed by 9- to 11-year-old schoolchildren

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the validity and reliability of a dietary recall questionnaire, designed for group-level comparisons of foods eaten at breakfast and intake of fruits, vegetables, sweet items and crisps. Design: Validity was assessed relative to 24-h dietary recall interviews, and reliability by comparing the baseline data with 4-month follow-up data. Subjects and setting: Fifty-eight schools took part in the validity assessments, with 374 children completing both measures. Reliability was assessed using 29 schools, with 1233 children at baseline and 1033 at follow-up. Children were aged 9-11 years and schools were located in socio-economically deprived areas of Wales. Results: Results indicated moderate to substantial agreements for most foods eaten at breakfast on the day of reporting and fair to moderate agreements for breakfast foods the previous day. For items throughout the rest of the previous day, agreement was fair to substantial during school hours, but slight after school. Correlations were moderate in terms of 'healthy' items and 'unhealthy' items consumed at breakfast on the day of reporting, but weaker for the previous breakfast. Correlations between measures in terms of fruits, vegetables, sweet items and crisps throughout the rest of the previous day were fair to moderate. The measure demonstrated fair to substantial group-level reliability. Conclusions: The questionnaire, while subject to a number of limitations, gives an adequately valid and reliable overview of selected aspects of children's diet. It is likely to be of value at group-level in randomized controlled trials of school-based interventions.

The reliability and validity of a short FFQ among Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous rural children

“…Reproducibility results obtained in the present study, although higher than in some other international studies (32) , were similar to most other studies of dietary recall questionnaires (17,33) including those of similar age (k values from 0?31 to 0?86 and observed proportion of agreement of 39 % to 87 %) (34,35) as well as in rural and 'ethnically diverse' populations (36,37) .…”

Relative validity of a self-completion 24 h recall questionnaire to assess beverage consumption among schoolchildren aged 7 to 9 years

“…However, the reference method in that study was a self-report food record that might have resulted in reporting errors in the same direction. Match rates slightly smaller than ours were found in a comparison between a 24 h questionnaire completed by children aged 9 to 11 years for several beverages and a 24 h recall interview (23) .…”

“…To our knowledge several self-completion dietary assessment tools for children aged 9 years or younger have been validated (16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26) , but none of these solely targeted beverage consumption. Furthermore, for validation studies there is no established statistical standard for measuring validity (27) , various methods have been used as a reference, and different main outcomes have been defined.…”

Development of a scale to measure 9–11-year-olds' attitudes towards breakfast

“…The dietary questionnaire (see Moore et al, 2007;Tapper et al, 2007) was a modified version of the Day in the Life Questionnaire (Edmunds and Ziebland, 2002) and asked children to describe everything they had to eat or drink at various points during the previous day and during that morning before school (e.g., at home, on the way to school, at school before class started). As a supplement to this measure, individually administered dietary interviews (see Moore et al, 2007;Tapper et al, 2007) were carried out by a trained researcher with a sub-sample of children using a standardised protocol based on that employed by Lytle et al (1993).…”

“…As a supplement to this measure, individually administered dietary interviews (see Moore et al, 2007;Tapper et al, 2007) were carried out by a trained researcher with a sub-sample of children using a standardised protocol based on that employed by Lytle et al (1993).…”