Reliability Estimation and Pilot Testing of Diet Quality Assessment Tool for Indian Children

Abstract

Malnutrition in childhood is one of the reasons for the high child mortality rate which can be due to many reasons including inadequate intake of nutrients required for proper growth and poor diet quality. As no index for assessing diet quality of Indian children was found after reviewing of literature, the study aimed to standardize Diet Quality Assessment Tool for Indian children (DQAT). The study sample included 30 school going children selected randomly from school of Banasthali Vidyapith, Rajasthan. Dietary assessment was done by 24 hour recall method and reliability was evaluated using Crohnbach's alpha, split half and test retest reliability. The intake of nutrients was in accordance with the recommended dietary allowances (RDA) except for energy and iron in both boys and girls. Reliability was 0.65, 0.85 and 0.59 by split half method, test retest and Crohnbach's alpha method respectively suggesting low reliability, recommending the need for revision of DQAT items.