A review of study designs and methods of dietary assessment in nutritional epidemiology of chronic disease

Increasingly the role of diet in the etiology of chronic disease has been the focus of research. Reviewed here are the epidemiologic study designs used for such research and the methodologies used for measurement of diet. Strengths and weaknesses of ecologic, cross-sectional, case-control cohort studies and clinical trials are discussed. Additionally the advantages and disadvantages of dietary recalls, food records, diet histories and food frequency questionnaires are reviewed as pertains to their use in nutritional epidemiology research.