Nutrition/Obesity
Validity and Reliability of a Diet Quality Screener in a Sample of Participants Enrolled in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Nour Hammad* Nour Hammad Meghan Zimmer Rebecca Mozaffarian Eric Rimm Erica Kenney
Objectives: This study aims to assess the validity and reliability of a brief parent-reported diet quality screener for young children.
Methods: We obtained data from 174 1-4 year-olds enrolled in a study of WIC. We conducted a cross-sectional evaluation of the psychometric properties of the 16-item rapid Prime Diet Quality Score screener for Kids (rPDQS-Kids), a brief food frequency questionnaire. We evaluated test-retest reliability and internal consistency. We also assessed criterion validity by comparing specific food categories from rPDQS-Kids with average intake from two 24-hr recalls measured via the Automated Self-Administered 24-Hour Dietary Assessment Tool (ASA24). We assessed construct validity by testing whether rPDQS-Kids scores were associated with food insecurity and parental education.
Results: The rPDQS-Kids showed moderate test-retest reliability (Intraclass Correlation Coefficient of 0.58 for total healthy component scores and 0.75 for total unhealthy component scores). Internal consistency reliability was also moderate, with Cronbach’s α=0.61 and α=0.65 for the healthy and unhealthy component scores, respectively. Estimates of intake of healthy food categories from rPDQS-Kids were correlated with estimates from ASA24, with Spearman’s r ranging from 0.31 for vegetables to 0.46 for fruits. However, rPDQS-Kids and ASA24 were inversely correlated for unhealthy components, ranging from -0.22 for refined grains to -0.65 for juice. Food insecurity and parental education were not significantly associated with total, healthy, and unhealthy component rPDQS-Kids scores.
Conclusions: The rPDQS-Kids shows potential as a low-burden tool for caregivers to proxy-report young children’s intake. More research is needed to develop valid and reliable brief screeners of young children’s diet quality.