Dietary assessment tools - Flinders University

THIS RESEARCH IS FUNDED BY
The Centre for Research Excellence in Early Prevention of Obesity in Childhood (EPOCH) is funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council (1001675).

Referencing

Please use the below references when citing the following tools:

Zarnowiecki D and Byrne R (2021), ‘New rapid assessment tools to measure obesity related behaviours in 0-5 years old, oral presentation in ‘EPOCH Special Symposia’, Australia and New Zealand Obesity Society Annual Scientific Meeting, Brisbane (virtual conference), 20-22 July.

Magarey, A., Golley, R., Spurrier, N., Goodwin, E. & Ong, F. 2009, ‘Reliability and validity of the Children’s Dietary Questionnaire; A new tool to measure children’s dietary patterns’, International Journal of Pediatric Obesity, vol. 4, no.4. pp. 257-265.

Bell L, Golley R, Magarey A (2014) A short food-group based dietary questionnaire is reliable and valid for assessing toddlers’ dietary risk, British Journal of Nutrition, 112(4): 627-37.

Bell LK, Golley RK, Mauch CE, Mathew SM, Magarey AM. Validation testing of a short food-group-based questionnaire to assess dietary risk in preschoolers aged 3-5 years. Nutr Diet. 2019 Nov;76(5):642-645. doi: 10.1111/1747-0080.12412. Epub 2018 Feb 23. PMID: 29473276.

Tonkin, E.; Kennedy, D.; Golley, R.; Byrne, R.; Rohit, A.; Kearns, T.; Hanieh, S.; Biggs, B.-A.; Brimblecombe, J. The Relative Validity of the Menzies Remote Short-Item Dietary Assessment Tool (MRSDAT) in Aboriginal Australian Children Aged 6–36 Months. Nutrients 2018, 10, 590. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu10050590

Hendrie GA, Viner Smith E, Golley RK. The reliability and relative validity of a diet index score for 4-11-year-old children derived from a parent-reported short food survey. Public Health Nutr. 2014 Jul;17(7):1486-97. doi: 10.1017/S1368980013001778. Epub 2013 Jul 5. PMID: 23830074.

Tools to measure food intake, diet quality and obesity-related behaviours across childhood

Poor diet is a key lifestyle and obesity-related behaviour, even among infants and young children. Quick and robust measurement of lifestyle behaviours, including diet quality, in young children is important for monitoring population trends and evaluating nutrition-promotion and obesity prevention programs. Until now, there were limited brief tools available that both accurately and reliably measure diet, and other lifestyle behaviours that were feasible for use in policy and practice settings.

Flinders Caring Futures Institute researchers, including the EPOCH CRE, have developed a suite of tools that take less than five minutes to complete that measure diet, diet quality and risk of overweight or obesity across childhood, from as early as six months of age.

The brief diet quality tools ask parents to report how frequently over the past week their child has consumed a range of foods and drinks.
Tools that measure movement behaviours are also available on the EPOCH CRE website.
The tools are designed to be completed by parents, and can be used by policymakers, researchers, and healthcare practitioners as part of dashboards or surveillance systems.

Please click here to complete questions regarding your background and interest in the dietary assessment tools.