Brief Dietary Assessment Tool Validated in Clinical Setting

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An 8-item brief dietary assessment may prove efficient for learning about a

patient's current diet and has been validated in the clinical setting, a new

report suggests.

The food frequency instrument, called " Starting The Conversation (STC) " is

an 8-item simplified tool designed for use in primary care and

health-promotion settings.

Amy E. Paxton, MPH, with the Center for Health Promotion and Disease

Prevention, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and

colleagues reported their findings in the January 2011 issue of the *American

Journal of Preventive Medicine*.

According to researchers, prevention and management of chronic diseases,

including type 2 diabetes, is dependent on measurement of the diet, but this

is difficult and is costly to measure.

" Food diaries are burdensome and can influence behavior, diet histories are

time consuming, and 24-hour dietary recalls are expensive, " the study

authors note.

Paxton and colleagues used data available from a diabetes self-management

intervention study in the primary care setting to investigate the

feasibility of the 8-question STC dietary assessment.

The STC questions are designed to be answered by the patient with answers

organized into 3 categories. The first category identifies the healthiest

dietary habits, followed by less healthy dietary habits and then the least

healthy dietary habits.

The assessment is scored by tallying the number of answers in each category

(range, 1 - 16), with high numbers representing a less healthy diet and low

numbers representing a healthier diet.

To test the validity of the assessment, researchers compared the score

provided by STC in randomly assigned adult patients with type 2 diabetes

(mean age, 58 years; mean body mass index [bMI], 34.8 kg/m2) vs the fat

intake measured by the previously validated National Cancer Institute (NCI)

fat screener at baseline and at 4 months after the initial intervention.

The STC summary score from the sample population correlated with the NCI fat

screener (*r* = 0.39 - 0.59; *P* < .05) at baseline and after a 4-month

intervention aimed at reducing the intake of fat calories (*r* = 0.22; *P* <

..05), supporting the validity of the STC assessment.

The summary score remained unchanged at 4 months in individuals who did not

undergo an intervention (*r* = 0.66; *P* < .05), indicating that the

assessment is consistent with time. Conversely, the assessment was

determined to be sensitive, given that the intervention group had a

significant reduction in summary score vs the control group (M = 1.16 vs

0.46; *P* < .05).

" The brief eight-item STC tool identified healthful and unhealthful dietary

behaviors in a diverse sample, " both with and without intervention, the

study authors conclude.

They add that the assessment was " robust across a variety of participant

characteristics, was stable over time in the absence of treatment, was

sensitive to treatment, and was a reasonably valid measure " against a

previously validated dietary fat screener.

According to the researchers, the STC assessment has yet to be validated

against a known standard of dietary intake in a large trial, and the

conclusions drawn from these data are from a single site; however, the STC

is " the shortest instrument available designed specifically to help clinic

staff identify atherogenic dietary patterns and guide counseling. "

*This study was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Diabetes

and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. The study authors have disclosed no

relevant financial relationships.*

*Am J Prev Med. *2011;40:67-71.

Abstract<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve & db=PubMed & li\

st_uids=21146770 & dopt=Abstract>

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