Multifactor Screener in the 2000 NHIS Cancer Control Supplement (CCS)

The Multifactor Screener may be useful to assess approximate intakes of fruits and vegetables, percentage energy from fat, and fiber. The screener asks respondents to report how frequently they consume foods in 16 categories. The screener also asks one question about the type of milk consumed. No portion size questions are asked. This screener does not attempt to assess total diet.

The foods selected to compose the screener were identified through an analysis of USDA's 1994-96 Continuing Survey of Food Intakes of Individuals (CSFII), a nationally representative survey of the food intakes of the US population available from the USDA's Food Surveys Research Group. NCI's Risk Factor Monitoring and Methods Branch staff used stepwise regression to identify the food groups that would best predict the three dietary exposures. Some of the foods in the screener predict all three exposures; some predict only one or two of the exposures.

The questions for the Multifactor Screener are provided below in two formats: self-report and in-person interviewer-administered.

• Self-report version of the Multifactor Screener (PDF), administered in the OPEN study.
• In-person interviewer-administered version of the Multifactor Screener (PDF) on the NHIS CCM (questions NAC.010 - NAC.160).

In NHIS 2000, we applied rules for excluding extreme data responses, described in Definition of Acceptable Dietary Data. The process of scoring the individual response data is described in Scoring Procedures. A description and guidelines for the appropriate uses of the screener-estimated dietary intakes is found in Uses of Screener Estimates. Validation data for the NHIS 2000 screener are presented in Validation Results. Finally, the various dietary intake variables are found in Computed Variables.

NOTE: The dietary variables on the NHIS 2000 dataset are in their natural units. For analyses, however, they must be transformed, first, to approximate normal distributions. For servings of fruits and vegetables, use the square root transformation; for fiber, use the cube-root transformation. No transformation is necessary for percentage energy from fat. After analyses, the result variables can be back-transformed for easier interpretation.

See 5-Factor Dietary Screener for the screener used in the 2005 NHIS.

A new dietary screener was used in the 2010 NHIS.