Content Validity and Reliability of a Food Frequency Questionnaire with Intense Sweeteners (FFQIS) in a Hispanic Population

摘要

Background: Artificial sweeteners are substances with high potential sweetness and low caloric value, some reasons why they are widely used by food manufacturers. Currently, although consumption of non-caloric sweeteners in processed food has increased, no validated instrument in the Spanish language is available to assess the amounts eaten of foods containing these additives, making imperative to have a reliable instrument to quantify the food consumed for investigational purposes. The aim of this study was to assess the content validity and reliability of a food frequency questionnaire for sweeteners (FFQIS) to calculate consumption among a Hispanic population. Methods: We carried out a prospective study among experts to validate the content of a frequency of food consumption questionnaire of products with non-caloric sweeteners, by using a Scale Content Validity Index (S-CVI). The validated questionnaire, including most representative products in the market, was applied to young healthy people (n=300) to obtain a Cohen’s kappa coefficient (k) by the test retest method. Results: The S-CVI with the experts (n=40) had a CVI=0.92 (range 0.60-1.00), which confirmed the adequacy of the content. Additionally, once the experts validated the questionnaire, it was applied to young healthy adults with median age 28, (range 18-57yr), the median k values and interquartile ranges (IQR) for several categorized groups were for group 1) yogurt and yogurt smoothie drinks k=0.33 |QR=0.27; group 2) ice cream, jam, jellies and maple flavored syrups k=0.64 IQR=0.20; group 3) chocolate bars and chewing gum k=0.66 |QR=0.06; group 4) nectars, flavored waters, soft drinks, teas k=0.53 IQR=0.23; group 5) bread, biscuits and corn flakes k=0.40 IQR=0.30 and Bueno-Hernandez et al., J Nutr Food Sci 2018, 8:4 DOI: 10.4172/2155-9600.1000716 group 6) sweeteners and other foods k=0.59 IQR=0.24. Conclusions: In this study, we validated the content of a questionnaire of intense sweeteners by experts, which was further applied to young healthy subjects to assess the consumption of food with non-caloric sweeteners. This is the first time a structured questionnaire (FFQIS) is designed for use among Hispanic speakers.