Validation of a Short Dietary Questionnaire to Evaluate Dietary Intake in School-Aged Children 9–11 Years in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Abstract

ObjectivesRegular and timely assessment of children’s diet is crucial in the context of increased childhood overweight and obesity in countries undergoing the nutrition transition. Presently, there is no quick, simple, validated dietary assessment tool to evaluate children’s diet in Vietnam. Thus, this study will examine the reliability and validity of a newly developed short dietary questionnaire (SDQ) among school-aged children 9–11 years old in Ho Chi Minh City to assess whether they meet the Vietnamese dietary guidelines. MethodsA validation study is being conducted among fifth-grade students (9–11 years old) from four primary schools representative for four areas of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. 29-item questions including intakes in food groups (6 core food groups, and 5 non-core food groups) and five mealtime behaviors over the last week will be validated against 24-hour recalls on 3 days during one week (2 weekdays and one weekend). The SDQ will be administrated two times within one-week interval to examine its reliability. The difference between the frequency of food groups intakes and mealtime behaviors from the SDQ and 3-day 24 hour recalls will be examined using paired t-test. Bland-Altman analysis with 95% limit of agreement will be used to examine level agreement between two methods. Weighted Kappa will be applied to identify misclassification between quintiles of frequency of consumption in food groups per week. Strength of agreement will be defined by the Landis and Koch value. Also, the Children Dietary Score reflecting adherence to the Vietnamese dietary guidelines will be developed to examine agreement between scores from SDQ and from the 24 hour recalls. These Children Dietary scores will be used to test the validity and reliability of the tool using the above tests. The Wilcoxon rank-sum test will be used to examine whether an increase in the number of serves/cups from the SDQ correlates with increases in grams of fruits/vegetables or water volume consumed. ResultsN/A. ConclusionsThe SDQ is expected to be used as a screening tool to assess whether school-aged children meet the Vietnamese dietary guidelines. This could support governments to help improve children’s diet in a timely fashion. Funding SourcesPhD scholarship from QUT and the Commonwealth Government of Australia.