Cultural relevance of a fruit and vegetable food frequency questionnaire.
OBJECTIVE
Canada's multicultural population poses challenges for culturally competent nutrition research and practice. In this qualitative study, the cultural relevance of a widely used semi-quantitative fruit and vegetable food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) was examined among convenience samples of adults from Toronto's Cantonese-, Mandarin-, Portuguese-, and Vietnamese-speaking communities.


METHODS
Eighty-nine participants were recruited through community-based organizations, programs, and advertisements to participate in semi-structured interviews moderated in their native language. Data from the interviews were translated into English and transcribed for analysis using the constant comparative approach.


RESULTS
Four main themes emerged from the analysis: the cultural relevance of the foods listed on the FFQ, words with multiple meanings, the need for culturally appropriate portion-size prompts, and the telephone survey as a Western concept.


CONCLUSIONS
This research highlights the importance of investing resources to develop culturally relevant dietary assessment tools that ensure dietary assessment accuracy and, more important, reduce ethnocentric biases in food and nutrition research and practice. The transferability of findings must be established through further research.
Paisley
Judy
J
School of Nutrition, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON.
Greenberg
Marlene
M
Haines
Jess
J
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002170:Canada; D018864:Cultural Diversity; D005247:Feeding Behavior / Q000208:ethnology*; D005260:Female; D005638:Fruit; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*; D014675:Vegetables