Abstract
BackgroundAlthough imbalances in dietary intakes can have short and longer term influences on the health of preschool children, few tools exist to quickly and easily identify nutritional risk in otherwise healthy young children.ObjectivesTo develop and test the validity of a parent-administered questionnaire (NutricheQ) as a means of evaluating dietary risk in young children (12–36 months).DesignFollowing a comprehensive development process and internal reliability assessment, the NutricheQ questionnaire was validated in a cohort of 371 Irish preschool children as part of the National Preschool Nutrition Survey. Dietary risk was rated on a scale ranging from 0 to 22 from 11 questions, with a higher score indicating higher risk.ResultsChildren with higher NutricheQ scores had significantly (p<0.05) lower mean daily intakes of key nutrients such as iron, zinc, vitamin D, riboflavin, niacin, folate, phosphorous, potassium, carotene, retinol, and dietary fibre. They also had lower (p<0.05) intakes of vegetables, fish and fish dishes, meat and infant/toddler milks and higher intakes of processed foods and non-milk beverages, confectionery, sugars and savoury snack foods indicative of poorer dietary quality. Areas under the curve values of 84.7 and 75.6% were achieved for ‘medium’ and ‘high’ dietary risk when compared with expert risk ratings indicating good consistency between the two methods.ConclusionNutricheQ is a valid method of quickly assessing dietary quality in preschoolers and in identifying those at increased nutritional risk.
Highlights
Imbalances in dietary intakes can have short and longer term influences on the health of preschool children, few tools exist to quickly and identify nutritional risk in otherwise healthy young children
The development and refinement of the NutricheQ questionnaire is outlined below, followed by a description of the validation study which was conducted in a sample of preschool children who took part in the nationally representative Irish National Preschool Nutrition Survey (NPNS) in 2010 and 2011 [27]
NutricheQ reliability principal component analysis (PCA) analysis identified that NutricheQ comprised five underlying constructs suggesting it as a multidimensional rather than unidimensional questionnaire
Summary
Imbalances in dietary intakes can have short and longer term influences on the health of preschool children, few tools exist to quickly and identify nutritional risk in otherwise healthy young children. Results: Children with higher NutricheQ scores had significantly (p B0.05) lower mean daily intakes of key nutrients such as iron, zinc, vitamin D, riboflavin, niacin, folate, phosphorous, potassium, carotene, retinol, and dietary fibre. They had lower (p B0.05) intakes of vegetables, fish and fish dishes, meat and infant/toddler milks and higher intakes of processed foods and non-milk beverages, confectionery, sugars and savoury snack foods indicative of poorer dietary quality. Conclusion: NutricheQ is a valid method of quickly assessing dietary quality in preschoolers and in identifying those at increased nutritional risk
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