Purpose: Canada’s multicultural population poses challenges for culturally competent nutrition research and practice. In this qualitative study, the cultural relevance of a widely used semiquantitative fruit and vegetable food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) was examined among convenience samples of adults from Toronto’s Cantonese-, Mandarin-, Portuguese-, and Vietnamesespeaking communities. Methods: Eighty-nine participants were recruited through community-based organizations, programs, and advertisements to participate in semi-structured interviews moderated in their native language. Data from the interviews were translated into English and transcribed for analysis using the constant comparative approach. Results: Four main themes emerged from the analysis: the cultural relevance of the foods listed on the FFQ, words with multiple meanings, the need for culturally appropriate portionsize prompts, and the telephone survey as a Western concept. Conclusions: This research highlights the importance of investing resources to develop culturally relevant dietary assessment tools that ensure dietary assessment accuracy and, more important, reduce ethnocentric biases in food and nutrition research and practice. The transferability of findings must be established through further research.
The Bayesian Approach to Decision Making and Analysis in Nutrition Research and Practice
