1. Innovative Dietary Assessment Methods in Epidemiological Studies and Public Health
Heiner Boeing
Department of Epidemiology
German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbrücke
Funded by

2. Issues when IDAMES was drafted
FFQ has been used as standard instrument
OPEN and other validation studies had been pointing to considerable measurement error regarding to the FFQ approach
Linear calibration functions were in use correct FFQ estimates for center mean and random measurement error
There was the need expressed for repeated dietary measurements

3. The general objective of this collaboration
Objectives of IDAMES
The general objective of this collaboration
project is to develop improved guidelines for
new and innovative instruments and
methodologies to assess among the adult
population individual dietary intake in
epidemiological studies and public health projects

4. Aims of IDAMES
to provide background data for a nutritional epidemiological approach that provides quantitative and precise estimates for usual dietary intake of individuals
to generate a better understanding of the design and feasibility of approaches with multiple short-term and long-term instruments, including internet-technologies

5. Overview work packages
WP 1:
List of partners involved: DifE and UCAM-CLGR, CSPO, UITo, Imperial
Description of the work
WP1 will monitor the progress of the work packages with respect to objectives set, deliverables, the time schedule and the available budget. WP1 will also force consistency in the progress of the project towards milestones. Furthermore, WP1 will co-ordinate and implement all the key administrative and financial decisions in the project and will ensure the project administration is complete, accurate and in accordance with the guidelines of the European Commission. Contacts with the European Commission and other stakeholders will also go through WP1. In addition, it will organize regular conference calls and will manage communication and information flows within the consortium, initiating any action required to correct any deviations from the project plan. All management and progress reporting will be done by management control reports, yearly control reports, minutes of meetings and conference calls and the yearly cost declarations. WP1 is also responsible for establishing the websites and assures that the progress of the project and major results obtained are accessible for the community via the websites.
Milestones:
Meeting of the steering group
Workshop: State of the art evaluation of dietary assessment methods
Start of the pilot study
Deliverables: This work package is directly linked towards all of the other work packages.
Deliverables this work package will especially provide for:
Specific websites of the project
Progress report to the EC 2007
Final report to the EC
WP 3:
List of parties involved: Lead partner: Imperial and DIfE
Description of the work and methodologies
In the first phase of the evaluation process the work will concentrate on the refinement of the success indicators according to the list of indicators of 2.3 and to develop the evaluation forms that allow to collect information of the progress of the project from the partners. The progress of the first year of the conduct of the study as well as the evaluation of the indicators reach at this stage will be part of the progress report after one year of the study. The methodologies to measure progress in the project will be used to further monitor the project and the development of the progress of the project after one year will be part of the final report.
In the second year and the last months of the project this workpackage is responsible to develop the methodologies to measure the sustainable impact of the project. Potential measures to estimate the long term impact of the project include website access (see WP 2), citation records of the journal articles, use of SOPs by stakeholders and endorsement of SOPs by international societies.
Evaluation report of the project

6. Workflow of IDAMES Literature Review SWOT-Analysis of new technologies
feasibility reports on
dietary assessment
final SOP´s for innovative methods
assessing diet in epidemiological studies
pilot studies
preliminary SOP´s for innovative methods
state of the art evaluation
Overall aim of IDAMES is to deliver kind of standard operating procedures for dietary assessment which should give advice for existing and upcoming studies.
Our work flow implied roughly systemic literature review on the performance of dietary assessment methods already used in studies including common as well as new ones. The review about the new methods mainly referred to new technological devices and less to new statistical methods. The new technologies were additionally evaluated with a kind of SWOT Analysis to systematically define their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
These results were summarized within a state of the art evaluation, on whose basis we identified our approach that we transferred into practice by pilot studies. It turned out that approaches that the combination of different assessment methods, similar to the Food propensity questionnaire is very promising, in particular the implementation of the 24HDR, as well as approaches based on internet or new technologies.
Therefore we developed and applied an online European Food propensity questionnaire which we tested in combination with 3 telephone-administered 24 HDRs.

7. Achievements regarding methodologies
Short term intruments (i.a. 24-h-recalls) are proposed as the prime method to collect quantitative dietary intake data in epidemiological studies (together with longterm food propensity questionnaires)
Non-linear intake distributions should describe the intake in a study population (identical with surveys)
The cost to establish quantitative non-linear intake distributions favors a calibration approach in studies with larger populations
In studies with larger populations (innovative) quantitative ranking instruments should used (Not adressed in this project)
Ranking distributions should be fitted to quantiative non-linear intake distributions

8. Achievements regarding innovative methods
A multilingual web-based food frequency questionnaire (European food propensity questionnaire, EFPQ) had been developed
Empirical data on the feasibility of a quantitative dietary assessment in existing cohort studies had been obtained
Participation rates for use of web based tools in study populations

9. Achievements regarding dissimination
State of the art reports of dietary methods are available
SOPs can be retrieved for the application of shortterm and longterm dietary instruments
A website will report about the project and its achievements

10. Information about IDAMES