The e-EPIDEMIOLOGY Mobile Phone App for Dietary Intake Assessment: Comparison with a Food Frequency Questionnaire.
BACKGROUND
There is a great necessity for new methods of evaluation of dietary intake that overcome the limitations of traditional self-reporting methods.


OBJECTIVE
The objective of this study was to develop a new method, based on an app for mobile phones called e-EPIDEMIOLOGY, which was designed to collect individual consumption data for a series of foods/drinks, and to compare this app with a previously validated paper food frequency questionnaire (FFQ).


METHODS
University students >18 years of age recorded the consumption of certain foods/drinks using e-EPIDEMIOLOGY during 28 consecutive days and then filled out a paper FFQ at the end of the study period. To evaluate the agreement between the categories of habitual consumption for each of the foods/drinks included in the study, cross-classification analysis and a weighted kappa statistic were used.


RESULTS
A total of 119 participants completed the study (71% female, 85/119; 29% male, 34/119). Cross-classification analysis showed that 79.8% of the participants were correctly classified into the same category and just 1.1% were misclassified into opposite categories. The average weighted kappa statistic was good (κ=.64).


CONCLUSIONS
The results indicate that e-EPIDEMIOLOGY generated ranks of dietary intakes that were highly comparable with the previously validated paper FFQ. However, it was noted that further testing of e-EPIDEMIOLOGY is required to establish its wider utility.
Department of Preventive Medicine and Public Health, University of Seville, Seville, Spain.
Luis Maria
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5470-0537
LM
Bejar
Virgen Rocio University Hospital, Seville, Spain.
Brett Northrop
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5073-4278
BN
Sharp
Virgen Macarena University Hospital, Seville, Spain.
María Dolores
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9439-7616
MD
García-Perea
dietary assessment; epidemiological methods; food frequency questionnaire; mobile phone application