Use of a food frequency questionnaire in American Indian and Caucasian pregnant women: a validation study.

Background: Food frequency questionnaires (FFQs) have been validated in pregnant women, but few studies have focused specifically on low-income women and minorities. The purpose of this study was to examine the validity of the Harvard Service FFQ (HSFFQ) among low-income American Indian and Caucasian pregnant women.

Methods: The 100-item HSFFQ was administered three times to a sample of pregnant women, and two sets of 24-hour recalls (six total) were collected at approximately 12 and 28 weeks of gestation.

Searching one or two databases was insufficient for meta-analysis of observational studies.

Objective: To address methodologic issues in searching for observational studies by presenting database search methods and results.

Study Design And Setting: Results of two literature searches for publications reporting on observational studies of alcohol consumption and the risk of breast cancer and large bowel cancer were compared, to evaluate the sensitivity of various bibliographic databases and search strategies, including hand-searching reviews and meta-analyses.

Results: The target sensitivity of 90% of publications in the breast cancer search was achieved by starting with Medline, then adding Biosis, Embase, and SCI EXPANDED-SSCI, which provided a total of 72 (91%) of the 79 relevant publications.