Repeatability of dietary patterns extracted through multivariate statistical methods: a literature review in methodological issues.
In the last few years, the need for processing large amount of data in nutrition science was dramatically arose. This created the need to apply, primarily, advanced analytical research methods that could enable researchers to handle the large amount of information. Dietary pattern analysis is a commonly used approach to enable and incorporate this phenomenon in nutrition research. This article reviews the most common dietary pattern's assessment statistical methods, evaluating at the same time the up-to-day knowledge regarding the reliability and validity of the retrieved patterns. The review is based on both a-priori (diet scores) and a-posteriori (multivariate statistical analysis) methods. The reports from the existing few studies suggest that the use of both a-priori and a-posteriori pattern analyses in nutrition surveys should be made with consciousness. The suggestion of new statistical techniques for the control of repeatability of dietary patterns is considered essential.
a School of Health Science and Education , Harokopio University , Athens , Greece.
Dimitris
D
Panaretos
b Department of Statistics and Insurance Science , University of Piraeus , Piraeus , Greece.
George
G
Tzavelas
c Department of Informatics & Telematics School of Digital Technology , Harokopio University , Athens , Greece.
Malvina
M
Vamvakari
a School of Health Science and Education , Harokopio University , Athens , Greece.
Demosthenes
D
Panagiotakos
D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D004034:Diet Surveys; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D006801:Humans; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
Nutrition; biostatistics; methodology; multivariate analysis