Question

Find a dietary assessment tool that can be used either generally or for a specific alteration in health. You can use your favorite search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo Search, AltaVista, to name a few). You may find the tool on a governmental data base, being used by an organization or facility, or in a journals and registries. You may decide to select a general tool or one that you can include in your course project for the disease selected. When you have found your assessment tool, evaluate its effectiveness by answering the following questions. What is the purpose of this tool? Do you believe that the purpose is fulfilled based on the questions being asked? Why? In what ways does the tool account for the individual perceptions and needs of the client? Is there a nutritional history included? What does it cover? Is the tool easy to use? Why or why not. Does the tool provide enough information to determine next steps or interventions? Explain.

Answer 1

The dietary assessment tool selected is the Diet History Questionnaire II:

The Diet History Questionnaire is a freely available food frequency questionnaire developed by staff at the Risk Factor Assessment Branch (RFAB). The purpose of this tool is to provide a practical approach to measure dietary exposure in epidemiologic studies investigating relations between diet and disease. The purpose of this tool is fulfilled as it measures food groups in pyramid servings and allows researchers to more accurately assess intakes in different food groups and may help facilitate the communication of scientific findings to the public with reference to dietary guidance.

The questionnaire was developed to assess the dietary practices of individuals and collects information related to their dietary pattern as perceived by them. The needs of the clients are met by helping in finding relationship between diet and disease.

The DHQ II has a food list that has been updated based on more recent dietary data and consists of 134 food items and 8 dietary supplement questions. It assesses the nutritional history of individuals.

The paper-and-pencil version takes about 1 hour to complete.Web based versions, however, are likely to take less time to complete. There are four different versions of DHQ II, in both paper and electronic formats. These four versions differ by time frame and portion size questions:

1. Past year, with portion size: asks about intake in the past year and includes questions about portion size.
2. Past year, without portion size: asks about usual intake in the past year and excludes questions about portion size.
3. Past month, with portion size: asks about intake in the past month and includes questions about portion size.
4. Past month, without portion size: asks about usual intake in the past month and excludes questions about portion size.

The tool is easy to use in terms of the questions included about the daily dietary intake but it takes a long time to complete (at least one hour), so it's time consuming. It is a self administered questionnaire and needs to be validated for completion by the investigator. Electronic formats may solve this problem.

The tool provides information on the dietary patterns and is an innovative and advanced method of assessing food intake behavior for use in nutrition surveillance, assessment, or analysis of diet-disease associations.