As Céline mentioned in the first response, there are 3 basic methods for a researcher to assess diet, 24 hour diet recall (considered the gold standard), food frequency questionnaires, and food record collection. I have been working on developing new innovative techniques for dietary assessment for the past 19 years. To decide which technique is best for your study depends on your goals and size of population.

24 hr dr are good for smaller studies because of the cost. This is usually administered by a researcher using a tool such as the U of Minnesota's NDSR product. The researcher will randomly call the subject X times during the study period time (we did a study that used 6 days of recalls). This can cost an hour of labor per recall (some centers in the US will charge about $50 per recall day). Because of cost, this method typically does not lend itself well to large studies (100,000 cohort for instance). But if you have 50 subjects it might be great. There is a new web tool from the US Nationanl Cancer Institute called ASA24 that allows a subject to enter their 24 hour recall directly so basically no cost (tool is free from NCI).

Larger cohorts, because of cost, typically have used a paper based FFQ (such as NCI's Dietary History Questionnaire, Willett's FFQ, or the Block FFQ). The FFQ is fairly error prone but given the size of the study, there still doesn't exist an alternative. We worked with Dr. Alan Kristal from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to take his FFQ (used in the Women's Health Initiative) and convert it to the web and added over 1,000 portion size images. We did a validation study at Ohio State University against 6 24 hr dr and resulted in very high correlation coefficients for the macronutrients (.67 to .90). We haven't published the results yet (hopefully soon) and do need to do a larger more extensive study to confirm the results but we believe that the new flow that we created in combination with portion size photos really helps the accuracy and yet keeps it simple to use (self administered).

As previously mentioned, combining 24 hr dr and FFQs are a great method. We haven't yet working on that type of integration.

Finally, food records tend not to be used in studies where high accuracy of diet is important (sometimes just getting a summary is useful). The reason for the low accuracy is that when subjects are asked to record their foods, they will modify what they eat or not record all foods. The US NIH about 5 years ago awarded several grants as part of the GEI program to research new techniques to lower the burden, lower the cost, and raise the accuracy. We were awarded one of the U01 grants for a mobile phone app that through the camera allows a subject to take a picture of their plate of food and automatically calculate food volume and in some cases identify the food automatically. We are still working on this project and have the basics science working in the lab.

The other concern when doing dietary assessment is to make sure the tool you use handles the food system of the subjects. Our FFQ and ASA24 are both US centric. Sorry for the long explanation but hope this helps.

Take 24 hour dietary recall for 3 days,or food dairy.

How large of a sample are you trying to take? A food diary would be good if it's just a few people and they're diligent about it.

When you say addiction do you mean abuse, dependence or both? I imagine measuring heroin addicts would be very different from measuring coffee drinkers.

I would suggest a Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ). There are several validated renditions and it is the method of choice for attempting to establish a longitudinal perspective of a given populations dietary habbits.

I think to assess food habits in a population may be useful reminder of 24 hours (applied 3 occasions, if a cross-sectional study) coupled with dietary food frequency method, which would be designed according to the food of interest. greetings. Elena

In Australia, we use dietary databases that convert recipe and daily menus into nutirional values for restaurants and consumers. See www.jamix.com.au

I need to agree with Celine that THE textbook by Gibson is a must to read if you want to do a nutritional assessment. You want to have a valid data so you have to tailor the questionnaires based on your research topic. What nutrients are you looking at. As many suggested 24 h recall is one of the tool, but you may want to complement it with FFQ to look at the pattern of food intake so that you could estimate the dietary intake . You could also get data from the nutrients status in the plasma or erythrocytes or other means to make a robust assessment, and lastly the anthropometric data too. For a complete nutritional assessment remember the ABCD . All the best

i am with what Elijah Magrane suggested, i used it during my master study for doing a nutritional assessment for our subjects in the research.

Thanks everyone. This was a big help. :)

Hassan, i will advice that you first get the broad objective, specific objectives/ research questions, design your questionnaire base on these specific objectives, combine both the 24-hr dietary recall with the food frequency questionnaire,have a Focus Group Discussion with the subjects, anthropometric and biochemical assessment will help in ascertaining the true picture of whatever dietary data you have collected.

It is better to go with food frequency questioner and 24 hr dietary recall.

for your research work you have to go for 24 hrs recall method , based on their food habits like veg/ N-V/ OVeg , dislikes /likes, frequency of intake- abt micronutritents and macronutritents, Jung foods, fast foods, meal timings etc.this will help to assess their intakes.

i was worked in a National Institute of Nutrition's study entitled "consumption of processed and non-processed food in India" and I used standard tools of National Institute of Nutrition if u want that methods i'll help you. just mail me at [email protected], and send me your research proposal.

my study includes anthropometric measurements (height, weight, BMI, waist circumference, hip circumference, waist hip ratio, mid upper arm circumference, skin fold thickness such as bicep, tricep, supra illiac, and sub scapular ) and dietary survey (included 24 hr dietary recall method and food frequency table). for further details feel free to contact.

Purnoor Siraj

Research Assistant

National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child development

Lucknow

Nutritional Assessment has four components - Anthropometrics, Biochemistry [laboratory data] Clinical [documentation of overt signs of deficiency or excess] and Dietary History [24 hour recall to assess if the meal schedule and meal composition is appropriate or not - it also takes account of why such a meal schedule and meal composition is followed thus providing an insight on which suggestions/recommendations would get acceptance and compliance] Unless the research protocol covers all these four components and unless the researcher links and integrates the data from all the four sectors nutritional assessment as a tool will neither provide the insights nor the appropriate interpretation of the data. Since you are looking at subjects with addiction you will have to interpret your data on nutritional assessment as that status affected by age, gender, etc as well as impact of addiction resulting in inadequate intake and its effect thereof - in effect you will have to look at two dimensional interpretation

Hallo Hassan, I agree that nutritional assessments take into consideration anthropometry, clinical, biochemical and dietary factors. A reliable and affordable tool will use anthropometry and dietary recall or food frequency. In Kenya we have national guidelines on nutritional surveys. they recommend tools that can be adapted by use of softwares such as NUTRISURV, EPINUT and SMART that are available online. Keep us posted on your choice

I suggest to prepare a tool for your specific survey

hello Hasan,

there r nearly 8 methods used to assess the dietary pattern. it depends on ur objective of the study.... so 1st specify ur objectives n plan a questionnaire by epmhasis their daily dietary pattern, socio-economic status, frequency of eating fruits n veg, clinical details so tat u could cum into a conclusion which tool u choose for ur survey.. all the best for ur survey....

Hi Hassan

I hope that you don't loose your way with all the suggestions you got from my colleges.

I would suggest that you concentrate on the most popular diet that you know of.

You must decide what is healthy/unhealthy food for your population.

You must define what you call "addiction". Is it food, drugs, drinks, cigarettes, Etc.

Mix between the questions concerning healthy and unhealthy food, in order to get the right/most accurate answer.

The questions must be short, understood, clear and having just one answer-not double meaning,

The question must be just to the point, like:

Do you drink water every morning before breakfast?

How much water you drink a day?

Is it bottled water?

Do you have a breakfast daily?

Do you have Veg/fruit before/during/after meal?

Do you take sugar?

Sugar: one teaspoon for a glass of tea?

2 teaspoons of sugar in a glass of tea?

3.........

4........

Do you use sweetened drinks?

Do you use sugar substitutes?

Do you feel dry mouth very often?

Can you point what did you eat/drink before having this dryness?

Etc.

If you like this answer, let me know and I will try to drive you further on.

In Friendship

Amir

I think you can make a list of food items available or taken in your region and give it with consumption frequency options like always/ often/ sometimes/ rare/ never and asses the healthy and unhealthy diets on the basis of food items and their frequency consumptions becoz both aspects are important in quality assessment of the diet.

One has short and long memories both and which could be elicited at the most if done cautiously using proper tools. Food list method is a reliable tool in the assessment of food intake and it is up to the researcher to develop a valid diet / food list as per the objective of the study.

keep a record of food consumed over a period of time of interest or use 24hrs recalls as suggested by Asar. food frequency questionnaire will help

Dear Hassan title of your uery "Nutritional Assessment" and objective "to assess whether they are following a healthy or an unhealthy diet." is confusing many of the respondents. pls clarify what exactly you want to do; a nutritional assessment or assessment of the quality of the diet?

Hassan, I think the tool to use will depend on what you rally wanted to achieve. The information you gave was insufficient to guide respondents in suggesting a tool for your assessment. There is no one cap fit all in nutrition assessment and usually it maight be better to combine tools. You will need to define what you mean by healthy and unhealthy diets which has implication for diet quality. I will suggets that you can useboth 24 hr diet recall and food frequency questionnaire which will give you information on nutrient intake and dietary intake pattern respectively. You may need a diet scoring tool for the quality assessment. If the subjects are addicts, you may need some qualitative tools to get reliable information. Best

This comment is in respect of Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ)especially based on Munira Husain's comment. I have noticed especially here in Nigeria tha tmost students and some researchers when using FFQ use "rarely", "occasionally"," never", "often", "sometimes" as indicator of the frequency of consumption. This indicators are unquantifiable and are wrong and a common mistake and or misuse of the FFQ. According to FAO in one of its publications where FFQ was described as a list-based diet history method (I cannot remember the reference now), the recommended frequency when using FFQ should be how many times per week (I day, 2 days, 3 days, 4days, 5days, 6days and 7 days) does your respondent consumes the listed foods. sometimes, often rarely are unquantifiable and does not make tangible meaning.

Thank you.

Hi Hassan

Before people carry suggesting you, it is essential that you express your conclusions regarding the different comments/views/info/suggestions/recommendations Etc that were given to you so far.

After having it, we can carry on helping you, following your thoughts, as there is no reason why we spend time while, may be, your view is completely different than ours.

Please do understand my point

In friendship

Amir

though the exact method of FFQ is getting information on daily basis but this method in useful when u r going to draw quantity of nutrient intake from it. if one's objective is just to find out the quality of diet than general frequency intake method is more appropriate particularly it is easy to choose options at respondent's level. so both methods has their specific utility.

Hello Hasan

It depends up on your intended requirement, what are your survey objectives? Any way, would be better to focus on growth and development factors such as anthropometric measurement.

Hello Hassan

As I know, currently the best way to evaluate diet quality is obtaining "dietary pattern". Dietary pattern shows a multidimensional picture of what we eat.

You have to follow the next steps:

1- According to your respondent's age, you should apply a self administrative FFQ or doing it through an interview.

2- You should calculate each food item in gram/daily using a food processor software.

3- You need to apply statistical methods mainly factor analysis or cluster analysis to obtain your dietary patterns.

4- Now, you can decide which respondent obey a healthy pattern and if you wish you can find if there is any relationship between dietary patterns and addiction among your subjects.

Mahmood Sohail MAS Consultancy

Hassan the survey is about intake of nutritional adequacy and the questionnaire then becomes simple once you know your objectives of the survey. Basically you should include portions, number of portions, frequency, quantity (if possible) because the person could be obese. Its good to know quality but dietary quality is one thing you cannot be sure of as it varies and can be affected by various factors.

As Céline mentioned in the first response, there are 3 basic methods for a researcher to assess diet, 24 hour diet recall (considered the gold standard), food frequency questionnaires, and food record collection. I have been working on developing new innovative techniques for dietary assessment for the past 19 years. To decide which technique is best for your study depends on your goals and size of population.

24 hr dr are good for smaller studies because of the cost. This is usually administered by a researcher using a tool such as the U of Minnesota's NDSR product. The researcher will randomly call the subject X times during the study period time (we did a study that used 6 days of recalls). This can cost an hour of labor per recall (some centers in the US will charge about $50 per recall day). Because of cost, this method typically does not lend itself well to large studies (100,000 cohort for instance). But if you have 50 subjects it might be great. There is a new web tool from the US Nationanl Cancer Institute called ASA24 that allows a subject to enter their 24 hour recall directly so basically no cost (tool is free from NCI).

Larger cohorts, because of cost, typically have used a paper based FFQ (such as NCI's Dietary History Questionnaire, Willett's FFQ, or the Block FFQ). The FFQ is fairly error prone but given the size of the study, there still doesn't exist an alternative. We worked with Dr. Alan Kristal from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center to take his FFQ (used in the Women's Health Initiative) and convert it to the web and added over 1,000 portion size images. We did a validation study at Ohio State University against 6 24 hr dr and resulted in very high correlation coefficients for the macronutrients (.67 to .90). We haven't published the results yet (hopefully soon) and do need to do a larger more extensive study to confirm the results but we believe that the new flow that we created in combination with portion size photos really helps the accuracy and yet keeps it simple to use (self administered).

As previously mentioned, combining 24 hr dr and FFQs are a great method. We haven't yet working on that type of integration.

Finally, food records tend not to be used in studies where high accuracy of diet is important (sometimes just getting a summary is useful). The reason for the low accuracy is that when subjects are asked to record their foods, they will modify what they eat or not record all foods. The US NIH about 5 years ago awarded several grants as part of the GEI program to research new techniques to lower the burden, lower the cost, and raise the accuracy. We were awarded one of the U01 grants for a mobile phone app that through the camera allows a subject to take a picture of their plate of food and automatically calculate food volume and in some cases identify the food automatically. We are still working on this project and have the basics science working in the lab.

The other concern when doing dietary assessment is to make sure the tool you use handles the food system of the subjects. Our FFQ and ASA24 are both US centric. Sorry for the long explanation but hope this helps.

Try survey monkey

Anthropometric measurements, diet recall, proximate composition of diets/foods to determine 'healthy and non-healthy diets' will be helpful in your work. But you need to pick a specific study population.

I have done the survey.I have selected FFQ and 24hr diet recal for dietary assessment but for complete assessment of health & nutritional status different methods of assessment also used Anthropometric assessment ,biochemical assessment etc

There is plenty of information available on nutritional assessment. Have you seen this book "Principles of Nutritional assessment", second edition (Rosalind Gibson, Author). Its a very useful book and I am sure you will find all the answers about nutritional assessment methods you are looking for.

Hello, I think that might also include questions about the perception that people have about their food .... so if you have an idea what the population consumes considered healthy or nutritionally healthier .... Moreover reminders 24 hrs. on 3 occasions might give an idea about the consumption of the population studied

Nutritional assessment revolves around dietary, laboratory, anthropometric and clinical methods. One can use 24 hours recall method, food records, dietary history and questionnaire but the validity of any methods is questionable. Every method has a shortcoming but at least the data gathered would give meaningful results.

Like most have recommended, the 24 hour recall taken on diverse dates would be a useful tool, a food frequency questionnaire is also good. Taking anthropometric measurements would be useful to validate your data on effects of poor dietary consumption as would be clinical and biochemical assessment.

There are so many new apps for cell phones that will read the bar code and track foods. This reduces reliance on memory of what they ate. You can analyze the diet in a research database like the one at the Yale-Griffin Prevention Center. It has the largest number of commercially prepared foods in its database. http://www.yalegriffinprc.org/