HNE-32806 Exposure Assessment in Nutrition and Health Research

Course

Credits 6.00

Language of instruction:

English

Assumed knowledge on:

HNE-25806 Research Methodology for Nutrition and Health I and HNE-26306 Research Methodology for Nutrition and Health II or HNE-24306 Methodology Nutrition Research; HNE-24806 Introduction to Epidemiology and Public Health; MAT-15303 Statistics 1; MAT-15403 Statistics 2 or MAT-20306 Advanced Statistics or MAT-24306 Advanced Statistics for Nutritionists.

Contents:

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.

Learning outcomes:

After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:
- 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.

Activities:

To reach these objectives, the student will:
- prepare and follow plenary lectures and read relevant study material;
- process the theory and get practical experience by studying computer-assisted exercises (e-learning);
- apply and process all newly developed knowledge from the different parts of this course by integrating it into an overall assignment that consists of the following tasks: develop a food frequency questionnaire, and write a protocol for an evaluation study (group work).

Examination:

- computer based test with open and closed questions (60%);
- group work: protocol evaluation study (40%).
Both components need a minimum mark of 5.5 to pass.

Literature:

A course reader will be available at the WUR-shop.
Books: Willett, W. (2012). Nutritional Epidemiology. Monographs in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, 3rd revised ed. ISBN 13: 9780199754038.