The 24-hour recall for Senegalese weanlings: a validation exercise
1994
Objective: In Africa, where growth retardation is highly prevalent, the use of expensive and time-consuming diet assessment techniques is a major obstacle to the collection of dietary data on large samples of children. The 24-h recall could be a valuable alternative. Its validity and reproducibility were assessed by comparison with the precise weighing technique. Design & Subjects: Intakes of complementary foods of 45 Senegalese weanlings, aged 11-18 months, were estimated with both techniques on the same days. Results: There was neither a level-dependent nor a systematic bias with the 24-h recall for energy and macronutrient intakes. Mean differences between techniques were < 11% of mean intakes. Rank order correlations (r) ranged from 0.60 to 0.81 for energy and macronutrients. However, the analysis by food group showed that the 24-h recall was less precise than the reference, especially for foods from the household common pot (r ranged from 0.31 to 0.61 for rice, oil and fish). In particular, measuring rice intake as a number of 'handfuls' was not satisfactory. The technique needs further improvement for these foods. Conclusion: Since it provides unbiased estimates of weanlings' intakes, the 24-h recall can be used for diet surveys of groups of children. Its lack of precision, which could cause attenuation in epidemiological studies, can be compensated by increasing the number of days of survey. This study suggests that a precision equivalent to that of a 1-day weighed survey could be obtained with two 24-h recalls, at a considerably lower cost.
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