• H R Rockett, M Breitenbach, A L Frazier, J Witschi, A M Wolf, A E Field, and G A Colditz.
• Channing Laboratory, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.
• Prev Med. 1997 Nov 1; 26 (6): 808-16.

BackgroundTo address limited longitudinal nutrition data on children and adolescents, a self-administered food frequency questionnaire was designed for older children and adolescents. Initially, the Youth/Adolescent Questionnaire (YAQ) was developed and demonstrated to be reproducible. This study was conducted to evaluate its validity.MethodsThe form was administered twice to a sample of 261 youths (ages 9 to 18) at an approximate interval of 1 year (1993-1994), and three 24-hr dietary recalls were collected during this period. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated on nutrient data.ResultsValidity was first evaluated by comparing the average of the three 24-hr recalls to the average of the two YAQs. Similar mean nutrients were found by both methods. Correlation coefficients between the mean energy-adjusted nutrients computed by the two methods ranged from 0.21 for sodium to 0.58 for folate. After correction for within-person error, the average correlation coefficient was 0.54, similar to that found among adults.ConclusionA simple self-administered questionnaire completed by older children and adolescents can provide nutritional information about this age group.

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