Reproducibility and relative validity of a short food frequency questionnaire for Chinese pregnant women in Hong Kong

Abstract

Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) should be tailored and shown to be reliable and valid for use in a specific population. Therefore, we developed a short Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) for Chinese pregnant women in Hong Kong and evaluated its reproducibility and validity. We recruited 45 pregnant women from a hospital or maternal and child health centers during 29 November 2018 to 14 November 2019, then the short FFQ was administered twice in one month. Three-day Dietary Recalls (DR) were conducted between two FFQ administrations. Relative validity and reproducibility the short FFQ over a period of 1 month. Reliability of dietary intake was evaluated by Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC), and the relationship between FFQ- and DR-reported values was examined using Pearson correlation. The reliability of nutrient intake was moderate (0.50 to 0.75) to good (0.75 to 0.90), but only poor (<0.5) to moderate for food group intake. Most nutrients reported by the short FFQ significantly correlated with values reported by dietary recalls. Meanwhile, only several food groups showed significant correlations in the values reported by short FFQ and dietary recalls. When looking across nutrient and food group categories, it is notable that fiber and fruit intake have demonstrated good reliability and validity. To conclude, our short FFQ can serve as a quick assessment tool to identify pregnant women with unhealthy diet in community level and is particularly useful to classify individuals with low fruits or fiber intake.