How to engage children in self-administered dietary assessment programmes

Effectively assessing children’s dietary intake is essential for understanding the complex relationships among dietary behaviours and obesity. Dietary assessment accuracy decreases when children are unable or unmotivated to complete accurate self‐reports. Technology‐based assessment instruments for...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of human nutrition and dietetics 2014-01, Vol.27 (s1), p.5-9
Main Authors: Lu, A. S., Baranowski, J., Islam, N., Baranowski, T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accuracy
Child
children
Children & youth
communication
Diet
Diet Records
Diet Surveys
dietary assessment
Feeding Behavior
Humans
media psychology
Motivation
Nutrition Assessment
Nutrition research
Obesity
Obesity - etiology
Self Report
technology-based dietary assessment
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Summary:Effectively assessing children’s dietary intake is essential for understanding the complex relationships among dietary behaviours and obesity. Dietary assessment accuracy decreases when children are unable or unmotivated to complete accurate self‐reports. Technology‐based assessment instruments for children’s self‐report of diet can be enhanced in light of developments in media psychology and communication science. To motivate children to complete a dietary assessment, researchers could use animated, customisable agents; embed the assessment process into a video game; or add narratives to encourage self‐reporting behaviour. To improve accuracy, the intake environment could be recreated virtually; training sessions could be interspersed to improve portion estimation; and implicit attitudinal measures could be incorporated as a control or to increase validity. Research is needed to evaluate possible methods of enhancing children’s self‐reporting motivation and accuracy. The main challenge remains how to engage children without biasing their reporting.
ISSN:0952-3871
1365-277X
DOI:10.1111/j.1365-277X.2012.01258.x