Validation, reliability and operational equivalency of the nutritional screening method “Determine The Nutritional Health Of The Elderly”

Abstract

Abstract Objective: To analyze the reliability, validity and operational equivalence of the nutritional screening method "Assessing The Nutritional Condition Of The Elderly". Method: This study was conducted with a subsample of 174 elderly persons from the Health, Welfare and Aging (SABE) study. The “Assessing The Nutritional Condition Of The Elderly” method consists of ten questions which classify individuals according to nutritional risk. Anthropometric and nutritional indicators were adopted as gold standard measures for comparison with the values of the method. Reliability was verified using the McNemar and Bland Altman tests, the validity of the discriminant type was assessed by the Mann-Whitney test and operational equivalence was identified through data relating to the time required to apply the method and the degree of understanding of the same using the Likert scale (1 to 5). Results: Of the 174 elderly persons interviewed, 63.8% were women and 52.3% were in the 60-74 years age group. It was found that 43.1% and 33.3% of the subjects had moderate to high nutritional risk, respectively, with a higher prevalence of high nutritional risk among women (33.3%) and those aged 60-74 years (43.4%). The method analyzed showed satisfactory results for reliability and discriminant validity. The average time required to apply this method was approximately seven minutes and the overall mean grade of understanding was 4.8. Conclusion: The method studied can be used by health professionals in epidemiological and clinical studies to identify the presence of nutritional risk in elderly persons living at home.