Abstract

HINNIG, Patrícia de Fragas; PRADO, Barbara Grassi  and  LATORRE, Maria do Rosário Dias de Oliveira. Validity and reproducibility of a food frequency questionnaire for children. J. Hum. Growth Dev. [online]. 2018, vol.28, n.2, pp. 120-128. ISSN 0104-1282.  http://dx.doi.org/10.7322/jhgd.147217.

INTRODUCTION: A Quantitative Food Frequency Questionnaire (QUEFAC) was developed by Hinnig et al. (2010) to evaluate the usual food consumption of children 7 to 10 years old, since those developed for adults may overestimate the consumption of children. However, its validity and reproducibility must be tested to assert that the instrument has a recognized quality. OBJECTIVE: To assess the reproducibility and validity of the QUEFAC to children aged 7 to 10 years. METHODS: Reproducibility was tested with 89 children who responded to two QUEFAC's. Validity was tested with 167 children who responded to three 24-hour recalls (reference method) and one QUEFAC. For the evaluation, the paired t-tests, Wilcoxon, intraclass correlation coefficients, weighted Kappa and analysis of the Bland-Altman graphs were used. RESULTS: For reproducibility, mean differences were observed for all nutrients investigated, correlation coefficients ranged from 0.12 to 0.54 and Kappa values from 0.01 to 0.39. For validity, mean differences for all nutrients were observed, except for energy and zinc, correlation coefficients ranged from 0 to 0.37, Kappa values from 0 to 0.27. Bland-Altman graphs showed a random distribution for most of the nutrients investigated. CONCLUSION: The QUEFAC was not valid for evaluation of usual food consumption of the last three months in children aged 7 to 10 years in São Paulo and presented moderate reproducibility for energy, protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, potassium, magnesium and vitamin B2.

Keywords : food consumption; child; questionnaires; validity of results; reproducibility of results; nutritional assessment.

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