2021 Volume 72 Issue 5 Pages 251-259
Iron deficiency is an ever-present issue in young adult women who often overlook the importance of including sources of iron in their diet. Therefore, we developed the Revised Self-Administered Iron Intake Scale (RIIS) to facilitate nutritional education on iron intake. We incorporated the concept of health literacy as defined by the WHO, which is the ability to obtain, understand, and utilize health information, while developing the scale. We conducted cross-sectional studies on university students.
The respondents required an average time of 3 minutes to complete the survey. We found that the amount of iron intake estimated by the RIIS was significantly correlated with the value measured by the food frequency survey, the Brief-type Self-administered Diet History Questionnaire (BDHQ). The correlation coefficient was 0.70 (n = 124, p < 0.01). We confirmed the retest reliability by observing a significant correlation between the estimated iron intake values at two time points during a month-long interval. The correlation coefficient for this trial was 0.74 (n = 53, p < 0.01). Using this information, young adult women can address their nutritional knowledge gaps.
