@Article{info:doi/10.2196/mhealth.5418,
author="Segovia-Siapco, Gina
and Sabat{\'e}, Joan",
title="Using Personal Mobile Phones to Assess Dietary Intake in Free-Living Adolescents: Comparison of Face-to-Face Versus Telephone Training",
journal="JMIR Mhealth Uhealth",
year="2016",
month="Jul",
day="29",
volume="4",
number="3",
pages="e91",
keywords="adolescents; dietary assessment; dietary records; digital images; follow-up; mobile phones; real-time support; technology",
abstract="Background: Traditional paper-based methods to assess food intake can be cumbersome for adolescents; use of mobile phones to track and photograph what they eat may be a more convenient, reliable, and compelling way to collect data. Objective: Our aims were to determine (1) the feasibility of using personal mobile phones to send food records with digital images (FRDIs) among free-living adolescents and (2) whether the quality of food records differed between a high-level intervention group (ie, face-to-face training plus real-time support) and a low-level intervention group (ie, telephone training plus next-day follow-up). Methods: Adolescents (N=42, 11 males and 31 females) aged 12-18 years who had a mobile phone with camera enrolled in the study via consecutive sampling. The first group (n=21) received face-to-face training while the second group (n=21) was trained via telephone. Participants received a fiducial marker (FM) and completed a 1-day FRDI using their mobile phones. At every eating occasion, participants were to (1) take clear images of their meals/food with a correctly placed fiducial marker before eating, (2) send the image immediately to a designated email address, (3) right after completing a meal, send a text message listing the time and name of the meal, foods eaten, and amounts eaten, and (4) before sleep, send an ``end'' text message to indicate completion of food recording. Those who received face-to-face training received real-time support during reporting; those trained by telephone received next-day follow-up. Descriptive statistics and comparison tests were used to determine performance of the groups. Results: All participants (N=42) who underwent training completed their 1-day FRDI. A significantly greater proportion of the low-level intervention group compared to the high-level intervention group placed their FM correctly in the image (95{\%} vs 43{\%}, P<.001), had complete information for each meal in their food record (95{\%} vs 71{\%}, P=.04), and had a higher overall score in meeting the criteria for food recording (4.3 vs 3.4 out of 5 points). Both groups had energy intake values that moderately correlated with their estimated energy requirements: low-intervention r=.55; high-intervention r=.51. Conclusions: Using personal mobile phones to report dietary intake via texting and digital images is feasible among free-living adolescents. Real-time support or high-level intervention does not guarantee better food recording quality among adolescents. ",
issn="2291-5222",
doi="10.2196/mhealth.5418",
url="http://mhealth.jmir.org/2016/3/e91/",
url="https://doi.org/10.2196/mhealth.5418",
url="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27473291"
}