Review of dietary assessment methods in public health - National ...

Day in the Life QuestionnaireThe Day in the Life Questionnaire (DILQ) 5 was developed as a supervised classroomexercise to measure fruit and vegetable consumption during the previous day amongchildren aged 7–9 years.OverviewThis questionnaire uses the 24 hour recall method to measure consumption and uses amixture of words and pictures to gain information. For example, the child must drawtheir breakfast in a pre-drawn circle and list all food items that were in their breakfast.The aim of these pictures is to aid recollection by the child and improve completion ofthe tool. It takes the child through their previous day and gets them to write downeverything that happened. The tool does not focus specifically on fruit and vegetableintake, but on all activities in a single day.It is important to note that the questionnaire does not measure fruit and vegetablescontained in composite foods, such as pizzas and pies. The explanation for this is that itwould be too difficult to estimate their contribution to the diet. Nor does thequestionnaire measure drinks because it is difficult to determine whether the drinks arepure fruit juice or diluted.The time needed to complete the questionnaire will vary depending on the child’sability and what the child actually ate the day before. It is generally undertaken in theclassroom under supervision with the researcher guiding the children through thequestions. The children fill in the questionnaires themselves, but are allowed to speakwith one another and ask for help from additional researchers or teachers. The use ofadditional researchers for this purpose would increase the resources and fundingrequired for application of the questionnaire. During testing it typically took 30–40minutes for each class to complete the entire questionnaire. Some children completedthe questionnaire more quickly than others, and these children were encouraged todraw further pictures or to colour the pictures already drawn. This was reported asbeing quite useful with this age group as these children did not distract others stillcompleting the questionnaire. Most children enjoyed completing the questionnaireand most teachers found it to be appropriate for use in this age group.Validation and reliabilityThe authors state that there was no gold standard method available to test the validityof the questionnaire, but an observation method was used. Individuals were trained toobserve the food eaten by children throughout the school day in two city-based schoolsand two village-based schools. Their reports were then compared to the completedquestionnaires. There appeared to be relatively good agreement between DILQ scoresand observations, with 70% agreement reported by the authors. In addition, interraterreliability was reported to be high with levels ranging from 0.85 for fruit and 0.92for vegetables. No value was provided for total consumption.Four schools were involved in the testing of the questionnaire. The questionnaire wasadministered on two occasions two weeks apart to assess test-retest reliability. Meandaily fruit and vegetable consumption was compared for each administration for eachschool. No significant differences were reported for three out of the four schools. In theschool where a difference was detected, it was noted that no vegetables were providedfor school lunch on that day which is likely to account for the differences.NOO | Review of dietary assessment methods in public health 11