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Review
. 2004 Sep;104(9):1385-92.
doi: 10.1016/j.jada.2004.06.019.

Assessment of interobserver reliability in nutrition studies that use direct observation of school meals

Michelle L Baglio  1 , Suzanne Domel Baxter, Caroline H Guinn, William O Thompson, Nicole M Shaffer, Francesca H A Frye
Affiliations
Review

Assessment of interobserver reliability in nutrition studies that use direct observation of school meals

Michelle L Baglio et al. J Am Diet Assoc. 2004 Sep.

Abstract

This article (a) provides a general review of interobserver reliability (IOR) and (b) describes our method for assessing IOR for items and amounts consumed during school meals for a series of studies regarding the accuracy of fourth-grade children's dietary recalls validated with direct observation of school meals. A widely used validation method for dietary assessment is direct observation of meals. Although many studies utilize several people to conduct direct observations, few published studies indicate whether IOR was assessed. Assessment of IOR is necessary to determine that the information collected does not depend on who conducted the observation. Two strengths of our method for assessing IOR are that IOR was assessed regularly throughout the data collection period and that IOR was assessed for foods at the item and amount level instead of at the nutrient level. Adequate agreement among observers is essential to the reasoning behind using observation as a validation tool. Readers are encouraged to question the results of studies that fail to mention and/or to include the results for assessment of IOR when multiple people have conducted observations.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Assessment of interobserver reliability (IOR) during data collection for seven studies.
Figure 1
Figure 1
Assessment of interobserver reliability (IOR) during data collection for seven studies.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Interobserver reliability (IOR) results in chronological order for study A. (IOR was assessed twice monthly on 9 days during 14 weeks of data collection. Two subjects were observed on each day of IOR assessment except for day 9 on which Subject 17 was the only subject observed for IOR.)
Figure 3
Figure 3
Interobserver reliability (IOR) results in chronological order for study B. (IOR was assessed weekly on 12 days during 16 weeks of data collection. Two subjects were observed on each day of IOR assessment except for day 2 on which three subjects [Subjects 3, 4, and 5] were observed for IOR and days 5, 9, and 10 on each of which only one subject [Subjects 10, 17, and 18, respectively] was observed for IOR.)
Figure 4
Figure 4
Interobserver reliability (IOR) results in chronological order for study C. (IOR was assessed weekly on 6 days during 6 weeks of data collection. Two subjects were observed on each day of IOR assessment except for days 2 and 5 on which only one subject [Subjects 3 and 8, respectively] was observed for IOR.)
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