Public Health Nutrition: page 1 of 14 doi:10.1017/S1368980010001928 The reliability and validity of a short FFQ among Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous rural children Josephine D Gwynn 1, *, Victoria M Flood 2,3 , Catherine A D’Este 1 , John R Attia 1 , Nicole Turner 4 , Janine Cochrane 5 and John H Wiggers 1 on behalf of the Many Rivers Diabetes Prevention Project study team† 1 Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Faculty of Health, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2308, Australia: 2 Cluster of Public Health Nutrition, Institute of Obesity, Nutrition and Exercise, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia: 3 School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences, The University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia: 4 Durri Aboriginal Medical Service Corporation, Kempsey, Australia: 5 Biripi Aboriginal Medical Service, Taree, Australia Submitted 26 August 2009: Accepted 1 June 2010 Abstract Objective: To determine the reproducibility and validity of a short FFQ (SFFQ) for Australian rural children aged 10 to 12 years, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. Design: In this cross-sectional study participants completed the SFFQ on two occasions and three 24 h recalls. Concurrent validity was established by comparing results of the first SFFQ against food recalls; reproducibility was established by comparing the two SFFQ. Setting: The north coast of New South Wales in the Australian summer of late 2005. Subjects: Two hundred and forty-one children (ninety-two Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and 100 boys) completed two SFFQ and were included in the reproducibility study; of these, 205 participants with a mean age of 10?8(SD 0?7) years took part in the validity study. Results: The SFFQ showed moderate to good reproducibility among all children with kappa coefficients for repeated measures between 0?41 and 0?80. Eighteen of twenty- three questions demonstrated good validity against the mean of the 24 h recalls, with statistically significant increasing trends (P # 0?05) for mean daily weight and/or fre- quency as survey response categories increased. A similar number of short questions showed good validity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children as for their non-Indigenous counterparts. Conclusions: Many short questions in this SFFQ are able to discriminate between different categories of food intake and provide information on relative intake within the given population. They can be used to monitor and/or evaluate population-wide health programmes, including those with rural Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. Keywords Validity Short FFQ Australia Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children Indigenous Improving the health and welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is of national con- cern (1) . This population is at a much greater health dis- advantage than non-Indigenous Australians (2,3) , with high rates of chronic diseases, a rate of diabetes at least three times that of non-Indigenous Australians (4) , and a rate ratio for diabetes-related mortality in those aged 35–54 years of 23?1 for men and 37?2 for women relative to non-Indigenous Australians (2) . The incidence of type 2 diabetes in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth is six times that of their non-Indigenous counterparts (5) . Improving the diet of children has been acknowledged as a strategy for reducing the risk of chronic diseases during childhood and adulthood both nationally (6,7) and internationally (8,9) . To enable the monitoring of dietary consumption patterns at the population level, and the evaluation of health pro- motion and education programmes aimed at improving nutritional status, simple valid methods of measuring dietary S Public Health Nutrition y Other members of the Many Rivers Diabetes Prevention Project study team: Wayne T Smith, Daniel J Barker (Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Faculty of Health, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, Australia); Laurie J Clay, Stephen V Blunden (Durri Aboriginal Medical Service Corporation, Kempsey, Australia); Darren Barton (Awabakal Aboriginal Medical Service, Hamilton, Australia); Robin Roberts (Biripi Aboriginal Medical Service, Taree, Australia). *Corresponding author: Email Josephine.Gwynn@newcastle.edu.au r The Authors 2010