Research & Evidence-Based Practice Flashcards

A cross-over study design is particularly advantageous in nutrition research because it:

Answer: Allows each participant to serve as their own control, reducing between-subject variability

Crossover designs have each participant experience all interventions sequentially, reducing variability from individual differences and increasing statistical power.

Sensitivity analysis in a meta-analysis of dietary studies is used to:

Answer: Assess how robust the overall findings are when specific studies or assumptions are changed

Sensitivity analysis tests whether the meta-analytic conclusions change when specific studies, inclusion criteria, or statistical assumptions are varied.

Which of the following is an example of an ecological fallacy in nutritional epidemiology?

Answer: Concluding that individuals in a country eat less fat because national fat supply data correlates inversely with national heart disease rates

Ecological fallacy occurs when group-level associations are incorrectly applied to individuals, as population-level data cannot prove individual-level relationships.

In nutrition research, 'internal validity' refers to:

Answer: The degree to which a study accurately measures what it intends to measure within its own sample

Internal validity refers to the confidence that observed associations within the study are causal and not due to bias or confounding.

A nutritionist reviewing an industry-funded study on a supplement finds consistently favorable results compared to independent studies. This is most likely an example of:

Answer: Allegiance bias or funding bias affecting study design and reporting

Funding bias (allegiance bias) occurs when studies funded by entities with a financial interest show systematically more favorable results than independently funded studies.

The Hawthorne effect in a dietary intervention study refers to:

Answer: Participants changing their eating behavior simply because they know they are being observed

The Hawthorne effect describes behavioral changes that occur because participants are aware they are being studied, independent of the intervention itself.

Which of the following represents the appropriate use of a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) in nutrition research?

Answer: Ranking individuals by usual dietary patterns in large epidemiological studies

FFQs are best suited to rank individuals by habitual dietary intake in large epidemiological studies, where precision of individual day intake is less critical than relative dietary patterns.