Background

The Diet Quality Questionnaire (DQQ) is a rapid dietary assessment tool designed to enable feasible measuring and monitoring of diet quality at population level in the general public.

Objectives

To evaluate validity of the DQQ for collecting population-level food group consumption data required for calculating diet quality indicators by comparing them with a multipass 24-h dietary recall (24hR) as the reference.

Methods

Cross-sectional data were collected among female participants aged 15–49 y in Ethiopia (n = 488), 18–49 y in Vietnam (n = 200), and 19–69 y in Solomon Islands (n = 65) to compare DQQ and 24hR data in proportional differences in food group consumption prevalence, percentage of participants achieving Minimum Dietary Diversity for Women (MDD-W), percent agreement, percentage misreporting food group consumption, and diet quality scores of Food Group Diversity Score (FGDS), noncommunicable disease (NCD)-Protect, NCD-Risk, and the Global Dietary Recommendation (GDR) score using a nonparametric analysis.

Results

The mean (standard deviation) percentage point difference between DQQ and 24hR in population prevalence of food group consumption was 0.6 (0.7), 2.4 (2.0), and 2.5 (2.7) in Ethiopia, Vietnam, and Solomon Islands, respectively. Percent agreement of food group consumption data ranged from 88.6% (10.1) in Solomon Islands to 96.3% (4.9) in Ethiopia. There was no significant difference between DQQ and 24hR in population prevalence of achieving MDD-W except for Ethiopia (DQQ 6.1 percentage points higher, P < 0.01). Median (25th–75th percentiles) scores of FGDS, NCD-Protect, NCD-Risk, and GDR score were comparable between the tools.

Conclusions

The DQQ is a suitable tool for collecting population-level food group consumption data for estimating diet quality with food group-based indicators such as the MDD-W, FGDS, NCD-Protect, NCD-Risk, and GDR score.