Posted 3/20/2008

USC Experts make major contributions

Tom Hurley

USC researchers James Hebert and Tom Hurley from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at the University of South Carolina were major contributors and functioned as the statistical coordinating center for a special supplement that was published recently in The Journal of Nutrition.

The supplement entitled "The Examination of Two Short Dietary Assessment Methods, within the Context of Multiple Behavioral Change Interventions in Adult Populations" to report the results from the Nutrition Working Group (NWG) of the Behavioral Change Consortium (BCC). The BCC is an NIH initiative coordinated by the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) and the National Cancer Institute.

James Hebert

The BCC initiative focused on the implementation of innovative approaches to disease prevention by changing two or more health-related behaviors simultaneously. The NWG is composed of seven research sites, each of which conducted a behavioral research intervention trial that included a dietary component, and employed common diet assessment instruments.

The goal of the NWG was to evaluate the performance of two short, structured assessment instruments developed by the NCI, the fruit & vegetable screener and percent energy from fat screener. Data from both of these questionnaires were compared to data from 24-hour dietary recalls as the criterion measure.

In the introduction to the supplement, the editors note: "Studies of dietary behavior are an important, but sometimes neglected, aspect of epidemiological studies of nutrition and health. To be relevant to public health, epidemiological evidence of causal influences of dietary factors on disease risk should be followed by interventions to change those dietary factors to improve population health. For public health recommendations to be implemented successfully, studies of effective ways to encourage dietary behavior change are an essential component. Clearly, to know whether or not a behavioral change intervention works, it is necessary to assess the behavior at the beginning and at the end of the study and to detect differential change between the intervention and comparison condition. Indeed, the health promotion field needs measures that perform well for behavior change interventions targeting dietary intake.”

The NWG provided a unique, widely diverse population in which to test the instruments. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal (pre- and post-intervention) analyses were conducted. Taken as a whole, this collection of papers helps demonstrate the challenges inherent in using short, dietary questionnaires to evaluate change in dietary behavior in the context of an intervention study. It also illustrates the advantages that come from multi-site collaborative efforts for both NIH and the University of South Carolina.

For more information on the supplement, click here.