ABSTRACT

This chapter reviews the potential causes of error in reporting with the dietary recall and food-record methods, and describes strategies that may improve the accuracy of reporting by addressing these causes. The 24-hour dietary recall and food-record methods have numerous strengths in comparison to other self-report methods of dietary assessment such as food frequency questionnaires, making them preferred tools for monitoring food and nutrient intake of populations and studying diet–disease associations. Error in estimating food and nutrient intake has a host of adverse implications for nutrition research and surveillance. Due to the aforementioned implications of measurement error, there is great interest in understanding the causes of error in reporting with the dietary recall and food-records methods. Requiring participants to measure and weigh foods for food records may minimize food amount reporting error. Measurement reactivity occurs when a person's behavior is altered due to the awareness being measured and/or in response to being measured.