Exposure Assessment in Nutrition and Health Research

This course will address methodological aspects of exposure assessment in nutrition research. Focus is on:

• dietary assessment methods and in particular food frequency questionnaires;
• study design and analysis of evaluation studies to assess measurement error in nutritional surveillance and epidemiology.

• Design and develop food frequency questionnaires

• Design an evaluation study to compare the performance of a food frequency questionnaire against one or more reference methods

• Explain the aims and principles of evaluation studies in the context of nutritional research

• Understand how errors in dietary assessment affect the interpretation of results from nutrition surveillance and nutritional epidemiology and how evaluation studies can be used to obtain estimates of potential errors

• Understand the analysis of evaluation studies on dietary assessment, including the use of biomarkers in nutritional epidemiologic research

• Assignment other (40%) Protocol evaluation study. Groups of 4-5 students. In case of late submission, the assignment has to be re-done during the course in the following academic year. In case of failed submission, possibilities for a re-sit are discussed in consultation between the students and the course coordinator
• Written test with open and closed questions (60%)

HNE293030 Measuring dietary intake. HNH25806 Research Methodology for Nutrition and Health I and HNH26306 Research Methodology for Nutrition and Health II or HNH24306 Methodology Nutrition Research; HNH24806 Introduction to Epidemiology and Public Health; MAT20306 Advanced Statistics or MAT24306 Advanced Statistics for Nutritionists.

• Book: Willett, W. (2012). Nutritional Epidemiology. Monographs in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, 3rd revised ed. ISBN 13: 9780199754038.