Relative validity of dietary patterns during pregnancy assessed with a food frequency questionnaire

Abstract

This study aimed to assess the relative validity of maternal dietary patterns derived from a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire (FFQ). A total of 162 pregnant women aged 19–40-years-old were enrolled from the Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) Birth Cohort Study in year 2010 and 2011. The FFQ was compared with three 24-h dietary recalls (DRs). Two major dietary patterns were derived from the principle component analysis which are labeled as Healthy and Less-Healthy patterns. The Pearson correlation coefficients between FFQ and DRs for Healthy and Less-Healthy patterns were 0.59 and 0.63, respectively. At least 45% of the participants were correctly classified into the same third from the FFQ and DR for both dietary patterns. The weighted kappa showed moderate agreement for Healthy pattern while good agreement for Less-Healthy pattern between these two dietary assessment methods. Our results indicate reasonable validity of the dietary patterns identified from the FFQ in pregnant women.

• Dietary assessment
• food frequency questionnaire
• pregnancy
• principle component analysis

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the research team, hospital staff and pregnant women for their cooperation and support. We thank Dr Wan Nor Arifin B. Wan Mansor from Biostatistics and Research Methodology Unit for their help in this statistic analysis.