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Updated: Jul 9, 2026
'Boden Food Plate': Novel Interactive Web-based Method for the Assessment of Dietary Intake
Published on: September 18, 2018
A Novel Automated Participant-Recorded Dietary Data Collection Method Using Low-Cost Mobile Phones and Interactive
Lydia O'Meara1,2, Kate Wellard1, Joweria Nambooze3,4
1Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, London, UK.
Background:
Dietary data gaps limit the design of effective food policies and programs in low- and middle-income countries. Automated mobile phone-based tools offer an opportunity to fill data gaps using less resources compared with face-to-face methods, especially for high-frequency dietary quality monitoring in resource-constrained environments.
Objectives:
This study assessed the validity of automated participant-recorded dietary data via interactive voice response (IVR) on basic mobile phones to assess dietary quality among rural women in a sub-Saharan African context, against same-day gold standard observed weighed food records.
Methods:
Automated IVR collected list-based recalls of food groups consumed in the last 24 h using yes or no push-button response from 156 randomly selected women in rural Northern Uganda (wet season). Inter-method agreement was assessed by comparing mean women's dietary diversity scores (WDDS) using Weighted Cohen's kappa, Bland-Altman plots, and Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Agreement in percentage achieving minimum dietary diversity scores for women (MDD-W) and consumption of unhealthy foods and beverages was tested using Cohen's kappa and McNemar's test.
Results:
Most women (74.4%) completed the IVR, with completion associated with better network coverage and prior positive mobile phone experience. Compared with the weighed food records, agreement for the IVR was moderate for MDD-W (21.6% compared with 17.2%; kappa = 0.48), fair for mean WDDS (3.3 compared with 3.5; weighted kappa = 0.39), and moderate for unhealthy food (34.5% compared with 23.3%; kappa = 0.44) and beverage consumption (32.8% compared with 31.9%; kappa = 0.43).
Conclusions:
This study highlights the potential of collecting data from low-literate women in rural resource-scarce settings using IVR via basic mobile phones to estimate population-level MDD-W, WDDS, and percentage consuming unhealthy foods and beverages. Given the need for participant training, IVR may be best suited to high-frequency monitoring of sentinel groups across time. Further refinement of the IVR may improve food group reporting, reducing trade-offs between operational simplicity and accuracy. With appropriate adaptation, we expect this method is generalizable to other settings.
