Recency affects reporting accuracy of children's dietary recalls.

Purpose: This study evaluated the effect of recency on accuracy of fourth-graders' dietary reports.

Methods: Each of 60 randomly selected children was observed eating school meals (breakfast, lunch) and interviewed to obtain a 24-hour dietary recall using one of six conditions generated by crossing two target periods (previous day, prior 24 hours) with three interview times (morning, afternoon, evening), with 10 children (5 males) per condition. Accuracy of the school meal portions of each recall was assessed by comparing reports to observations. Rates for omissions (items observed but not reported) and intrusions (items reported but not observed) were calculated to determine accuracy for reporting items. A measure of total inaccuracy combined errors for reporting items and amounts.

Results: Using the prior 24 hours as the target period yielded better performance than did using the previous day: Omission rates were lower by about one-third, intrusion rates by about one-half, and total inaccuracy by about one-third (all p's<0.01). A marginally significant interaction of target period by interview time was found for omission rate (p=0.08), but not for intrusion rate (p=0.15) or for total inaccuracy (p=0.47).

Conclusions: This provides evidence that recency influences children's recall accuracy and demonstrates the importance of an awareness of principles of memory when designing what are essentially memory tests for epidemiologic studies.