Test-Retest Reproducibility of Adult-Reported High School Diet Varies among Racially and Ethnically Diverse US Men...

Adolescent diet is thought to play an important role in future chronic disease risk. However, few studies have examined the reproducibility of adult-reported adolescent diet, and evidence for possible differences in reproducibility by demographic characteristics is limited.

We assessed the ability of adults to consistently report past high school diet over a 1-y period and examined differences in reproducibility by selected demographic characteristics.

By using age-adjusted partial Spearman (ρ) or Pearson (r) correlations, we assessed 1-y reproducibility for 33 line items, 20 food groups, and 2 dietary patterns of high school diet reported in adulthood via a questionnaire completed by 742 participants in the Cancer Prevention Study 3 (CPS-3) Diet Substudy.

Participants' median age was 53 y (range: 31-70 y), 65.2% were women, 59.8% were non-Hispanic white, 24.8% were non-Hispanic black, and 15.4% were Hispanic. The mean Spearman correlation assessing reproducibility across the 33 line items was 0.60 and ranged from 0.44 to 0.72, with no differences in mean correlations by age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, or body mass index (BMI). Reproducibility was similar across food groups (ρ = 0.62; range: 0.44-0.68), with differences by sex, ethnicity, age, or BMI observed for some food groups (e.g., sugar-sweetened beverages). Pearson correlations for the reproducibility of 2 major eating patterns, "fast food" and "whole food," were 0.73 and 0.72, respectively.

These results show good 1-y reproducibility of assessed high school diet, as reported from memory in adulthood, by line item, food group, and dietary pattern, with noted differences by demographic characteristics.