Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Call For Help Part 2: Are You Currently On A Diet? Can You Take 2 Minutes To Complete A VERY Short Survey About It?

UPDATE: SURVEY CLOSED DUE TO RECEIVING SUFFICIENT RESPONSES. STAY TUNED FOR FUTURE SURVEYS THOUGH!

Today's survey is a followup to the one we sent out a few months ago. Since then we tweaked it on the advice of both those of you who responded, and some expert input. Even if you filled this out last time, we'd love for you to do so again as we're trying to iron out the kinks and I think (hope) we're pretty much there.
Back in 2012 I first posted my wish for there to be a questionnaire that would serve to help individuals and researchers determine how easy or difficult a particular diet would be to follow.

I called it the Diet Index Enjoyability Total or DIET score, and my hope was that by using a series of simple Likert scales (descriptive scales from 1-10), researchers could set out to evaluate a particular weight loss approach's DIET score where high scores would identify diets that could actually be enjoyed, and where low scores would identify under-eating, highly restrictive, quality of life degrading, dieting misery. This would be useful both to individuals who could use the DIET score to evaluate whatever approach they were considering, but might also serve as a surrogate for shorter term diet studies to give a sense as to whether or not there's a low or high likelihood of long term adherence to a particular study's strategy.

I'm happy to report that the first work on using the DIET score has been conducted by Michelle Jospe at the University of Otago in New Zealand as part of the SWIFT trial, and her and Jill Haszard's early look at the data is promising.

Part of the process required to validate a questionnaire involves a qualitative review to see whether or not it's easy to use, comprehensive, and unbiased, and this here is our second kick at that can.