DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A FOOD FREQUENCY QUESTIONNAIRE TO MEASURE DIETARY INTAKE OF MICRO- AND MACRO-NUTRIENTS IN ADULTS LIVING IN QATAR

Abstract

Background: With the increasing burden of non-communicable diseases in Qatar, there is a growing demand to understand the diet-disease associations in this population. Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) is a cost-effective dietary assessment tool, with low participant burden, making it ideal for epidemiological studies. While there exists a FFQ validated for Qatari nationals, there is a need for locally developed version tailored to the diverse Qatar’s population which comprises of 88% of non-locals. Objective: This study evaluated the validated and reliability of a newly developed FFQ to assess macro- and micronutrients intake in Qatar's diverse adult population. Methods: 121 Healthy Adults aged 18-65 years residing in Qatar were recruited. Participants completed the 97-food item FFQ twice, one month apart. The average of three 24-hour recalls (24HRs), collected at 3 different equidistant time points within the month, was used as the reference method for validation. Reliability and Validity were assessed using Pearson Correlation Coefficients, Cross-classification and Bland-Altman plots. Results: The FFQ demonstrated good reliability with Pearson correlation coefficients for energy and nutrients ranging from 0.59 – 0.77 (log-transformed). The gross misclassification by quartile was less than 3.3%. The FFQ had acceptable validity with significant correlations for most nutrients (r ≥ 0.3 (log-transformed)), except for some B-vitamins (B2, B3, B12, Biotin, Pantothenic Acid) and minerals (chromium, iodine, zinc), whereby correlations fell below 0.3. Cross-classification confirmed that more than 60% of participants were ranked in the same or adjacent quartiles with misclassification ranging from 0 to 11.6% for most nutrients. Conclusion: The results of this study suggest that the FFQ has good reliability and acceptable validity and is thus suitable for assessing dietary intake of adults in large studies. It offers a practical instrument for nutrition research and public health monitoring in Qatar.