Relative validity and utility of a short food frequency questionnaire assessing the intake of legumes in Scottish women.
OBJECTIVE
To validate a five-item, semi-quantitative, short food frequency questionnaire (SFFQ) designed to estimate daily legume consumption over a week, against results obtained from 7-day food diaries (7-day FD).


METHODS
Participants completed a 7-day FD and at the end of this period completed the SFFQ, to indicate the number of times they ate five legume-containing dishes in the previous week and what size portion of each dish they consumed. Daily legume intake (g day(-1)) was calculated for both methods and participants were classified into tertiles of intake for each method.


METHODS
Fifty-one healthy females aged 25-55 years, employed at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK between May 2003 and December 2004.


RESULTS
The two methods produced a similar mean intake of legumes [SFFQ: 14.8 (95% CI: 9.9-19.8) versus 7-day FD: 14.9 (95% CI: 9.3-20.6) g day(-1)] and the Pearson's correlation coefficient was 0.353 (P = 0.038). Exact agreement within tertiles and gross misclassification were 54.9% and 9.8% respectively. The weighted kappa statistic indicated fair agreement between the two methods (kappa = 0.262).


CONCLUSIONS
The SFFQ is an acceptable instrument for estimating legume consumption over a week and can be used to rank individuals according to the intake of this food group in similar nutrition intervention studies.
Papadaki
A
A
Preventive Medicine and Nutrition Clinic, Department of Social Medicine, University of Crete, Greece. agpapadak@edu.med.uoc.gr
Scott
J A
JA
D000328:Adult; D004032:Diet; D015930:Diet Records; D004034:Diet Surveys; D004435:Eating; D007887:Fabaceae; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D015596:Nutrition Assessment; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012606:Scotland; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires / Q000592:standards*