Electronic 12-Hour Dietary Recall (e-12HR): Comparison of a Mobile Phone App for Dietary Intake Assessment With a Food Frequency Questionnaire and Four Dietary Records

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Background: One of the greatest challenges for nutritional epidemiology is improving upon traditional self-reporting methods for assessing usual dietary intake. Objective: Evaluating the relative validity of a new method known as the current-day dietary recall (current-day recall), based on a Smartphone app called 12-hour dietary recall (e-12HR), for determining the habitual intake of a series of key food/drink groups using a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) and four dietary records (DRs) as reference methods. Methods: University students over the age of 18 recorded their consumption of certain groups of food/drink using e-12HR for 28 consecutive days. During this 28-day period, they also completed four DRs on randomly selected days. Once the monitoring period was finished, the subjects then completed a FFQ. A comparison was made between the different methods using the Spearman correlation coefficient (SCC), a cross-classification analysis, and weighted kappa (k). Results: A total of 87 participants completed the study (64% women, 56/87; 36% men, 31/87). e-12HR versus FFQ, for all food/drink groups: The average SCC was .70. Crossclassification analysis showed that the average percentage of individuals classified in the exact agreement category was 51.5%; exact agreement + adjacent was 91.8%; and no participant (0.0%) was classified in the extreme disagreement category. The average was .51. e-12HR versus the four DRs, for all food/drink groups: The average SCC was .63. Crossclassification analysis showed that the average percentage of individuals classified in the exact agreement category was 47.1%; exact agreement + adjacent was 89.2%; and no participant (0.0%) was classified in the extreme disagreement category. The average k was .47. Conclusions: Current-day recall, based on the e-12HR app, is in good agreement with the two reference methods (FFQ & four DRs), demonstrating its potential usefulness for categorizing individuals according to the usual dietary intake of certain food/drink groups.

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