Dietary Screener in the NHANES 2009-10

About the Questionnaire

Background

The purpose of the Dietary Screener Questionnaire in the NHANES 2009-10 is to calibrate a short instrument for use in time-constrained surveys in which assessment of total diet is not needed. The new Dietary Screener Questionnaire has been administered in the 2009-2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Because NHANES also collects 24-hour dietary recalls (24HR), the screener can be calibrated to the more precise 24HR. The algorithms that result from the calibration work will enable researchers using the screener in their own studies to improve the accuracy of estimates of dietary factors assessed. Researchers will also be able to compare their results to calibrated national estimates from NHANES. This work has been led by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and supported by the NCI, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), NIH's Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR), and NIH's Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS).

Description of the Questionnaire

The Dietary Screener Questionnaire is composed of 26 questions that ask about the frequency of consumption in the past month of selected foods and drinks to capture intakes of fruits and vegetables, dairy/calcium, whole grains/fiber, added sugars, red meat, and processed meat. Scoring algorithms to convert responses to estimates of usual intake have been developed for several of these dietary factors, based on NHANES calibration work noted above. The instrument is publicly available.