A rapid dietary assessment tool to determine intake of folate was developed and validated.
OBJECTIVE
Estimates of dietary folate intake are currently of considerable interest, but no rapid tools are available to assess dietary intake of folate that are well suited to everyday health promotion activities. We developed and tested the reliability and validity of two prototypes of a rapid dietary assessment tool (a folate intake tool, FIT) to determine dietary intake of folate.


METHODS
Five hundred and sixty eight men and women aged 33-83 years from Perth, Western Australia, completed one of the two prototypes of the tool and gave a fasting blood sample for measurement of serum folate. A subset (n=277) of participants completed the same tool on a second occasion 3-6 weeks later.


RESULTS
The Pearson correlations (r) between folate score from the tool and serum folate were moderately high for both prototypes (FIT-A r=0.54; FIT-B r=0.49). The folate scores for the two prototypes were similar on repeat testing and correlated strongly (FIT-A r=0.75; FIT-B r=0.68).


CONCLUSIONS
The rapid dietary assessment tool described here, FIT, provides a valid and reliable measurement of dietary intake of folate for both men and women.
Hickling
Siobhan
S
School of Population Health, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, Western Australia 6009, Australia. siobhan@cyllene.uwa.edu.au
Knuiman
Matthew
M
Jamrozik
Konrad
K
Hung
Joseph
J
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D004032:Diet / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D005492:Folic Acid / Q000008:administration & dosage* / Q000097:blood; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014904:Western Australia
D005492:Folic Acid