Validity and Reliability Study of a Semi-Quantitative Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) for Measuring Calcium Intake in Young Adult Women Aini Wita Nurul1, Triyanti1,*, Fikawati Sandra2 1Department of Nutrition, Faculty of Public Health, University of Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia 2Nutrition and Health Studies Center, University of Indonesia *Corresponding author. Triyanti, Email: triyantigizi@gmail.com
Online published on 4 June, 2019. Abstract The semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) is one of the dietary assessment methods widely used in large scale epidemiological studies. However, its validity and reliability remain debatable because it does not directly measure the quantitative consumption of food. The aim of this study was aim to evaluate the validity and reliability of semi-quantitative FFQ for measuring calcium intake compared to the weighed food records as a reference method. This study comprises of 54 female with a mean age of 21 years, selected by simple random sampling. There was no statistical difference in the median between two methods based on the Wilcoxon signed rank test (P>0.05). The Pearson's corellation coefficient between the two methods was significantly correlated (r=0.42; P=0.001). The Bland-Altman analysis showed that the mean difference (95% limit of agreement) bertween the semi-quantitative FFQ and weighed food record was 38.7 mg/day (−719.52–797.03) and had 3.7% degree of misclassification. There was no significant difference between the median of the semi-quantitative FFQ completed twice (p<0.05) and correlation coefficient, as shown by Pearson (r=0, 74 (p<0.05). This study concluded that semi-quantitative FFQ was a valid and reliable tool to assess calcium intake in young adult female from different levels of economic background. This method can be used in epidemiological studies and is good enough to find the high-risk individual with a low calcium intake. Top Keywords Semiquantitative FFQ, Food Weighing, Calcium Intake, Validity, Reliability. Top |