Development and evaluation of a diet quality screener to assess adherence to the Dutch food-based dietary guidelines

Summary

The Eetscore FFQ was developed to score the Dutch Healthy Diet index 2015 (DHD2015-index) representing the Dutch food-based dietary guidelines of 2015. This paper describes the development of the Eetscore FFQ, a short screener assessing diet quality, examines associations between diet quality and participants' characteristics, and evaluates the relative validity and reproducibility of the Eetscore FFQ in a cross-sectional study with Dutch adults. The study sample consisted of 751 participants, aged 19-91 y, recruited from the EetMeetWeet research panel. The mean DHD2015-index score based on the Eetscore FFQ of the total sample was 111 (SD 17.5) out of a maximum score of 160 points and was significantly higher in women than in men, positively associated with age and education level, and inversely associated with BMI. The Kendall's tau-b coefficient of the DHD2015- index between the Eetscore FFQ and the full-length FFQ (on average 1.7-month interval, n=565) was 0.51 (95% CI 0.47, 0.55), indicating an acceptable ranking ability. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) between DHD2015-index scores derived from two repeated Eetscore FFQs (on average 3.8-month interval, n=343) was 0.91 (95% CI: 0.89, 0.93) suggesting a very good reproducibility. In conclusion, the Eetscore FFQ was considered acceptable in ranking participants according to their diet quality compared with the full-length FFQ and showed good to excellent reproducibility.