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ARS Home » Plains Area » Houston, Texas » Children's Nutrition Research Center » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #282745
Title: How to engage children in self-administered dietary assessment programmes

Author
item LU, A - Northwestern University
item BARANOWSKI, J - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
item ISLAM, N - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
item BARANOWSKI, T - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)

Submitted to: Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/1/2012
Publication Date: 1/1/2014
Citation: Lu, A.S., Baranowski, J., Islam, N., Baranowski, T. 2014. How to engage children in self-administered dietary assessment programmes. Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics. 27(Suppl 1):5-9.

Interpretive Summary: Getting children to accurately report what they ate for the prior day is challenging. This manuscript outlines several innovative procedures that might increase children's motivation and otherwise enhance their accuracy of dietary recall, without seriously influencing what they report. Technology-based dietary assessment programs provide opportunities to improve the motivation and accuracy of children's reporting of dietary intake. Additional research is needed on these innovative methods.

Technical Abstract: Effectively assessing children's dietary intake is essential for understanding the complex relationships among dietary behaviors and obesity. Dietary assessment accuracy decreases when children are unable or unmotivated to complete accurate self-reports. Technology-based assessment instruments for children's self-report of diet can be enhanced in light of developments in media psychology and communication science. To motivate children to complete a dietary assessment, researchers could use animated, customizable agents; embed the assessment process into a video game; or add narratives to encourage self-reporting behavior. To improve accuracy, the intake environment could be recreated virtually; training sessions could be interspersed to improve portion estimation; and implicit attitudinal measures could be incorporated as a control or to increase validity. Research is needed to evaluate possible methods of enhancing children's self-reporting motivation and accuracy. The main challenge remains how to engage children without biasing their reporting.