Measurement Toolkit - Dietary assessment decision matrix

Dietary assessment decision matrix

Dietary assessment decision matrix

	Subjective Methods							Objective Methods
Dietary outcome	Estimated food diaries	Weighed food diaries	24-hour dietary recall		Food frequency questionnaire	Dietary checklist	Dietary history	Direct observation	Duplicate diets	Nutritional biomarkers
Energy and nutrient intake of total diet	✔	✔	✔		✔	✔	Maybe	✔	✔	✔
Intake of specific nutrients or food	✔	✔	✔		✔	✔	Maybe	✔	✔	✔
Infrequently consumed foods	Maybe	Maybe	Maybe		✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Dietary patterns	✔	✔	✔		✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Habitual diet			✔		✔	✔	✔			✔
Within person comparison	✔	✔	✔		✔	✔	Maybe	✔	✔	✔
Between person comparison	✔	✔	✔		✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Meal composition	✔	✔	✔		✔	✔	Maybe	✔	✔
Frequency of eating/meal occasions	✔	✔	✔		✔	✔	Maybe	✔	✔
Eating environment	✔	✔	✔			✔	Maybe	✔
Adult report of diet at younger age						✔	✔
Characteristic
			Single recall	Multiple recall
Number of participants	Up to ~5000	Up to ~1000	Up to ~5000	Up to ~1000	Any	Any	Up to a few thousands	Small	Typically small	Any
Cost of development	Low	Low	Low	Low	Medium	Low	Low	Low	High	High
Cost of use	Medium	Medium	Medium	High	Low	Low	Medium	High	High	High
Participant burden	High	Very high	Low	Very high	Low	Low	Medium	Low	High	Varies with sample type
Researcher burden of data collection	Medium	Medium	High	High	Low	Low	Medium	High	Low	High
Researcher burden of coding and data analysis	High	High	Medium	High	Medium	Low	Medium	High	High	High
Risk of reactivity bias	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No
Risk of recall bias	Minimised if diary completed at time of consumption	Minimised if diary completed at time of consumption	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Minimised if duplicate saved at time of consumption	No
Risk of social desirability bias	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Minimised	Yes	No
Risk of observer bias	No	Minimised	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Minimised	Minimised with blinding
Participant literacy required	Yes	Yes	Maybe	Maybe	Maybe	Depends on whether interviewing or not	Yes	No	If diary also completed	No
Suitable for use in free living	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Requires individual portion size estimation	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Maybe	Depends on design	No	Yes	No	No