‘How Do You Remember You Ate…?’

LEARNING OUTCOME: To identify retrieval categories used by children to remember what they have eaten. The purpose of this study was to identify categories for how children remember what they have eaten, and to relate retrieval categories to accuracy of reporting items eaten on school lunch. A Delphi technique study with 3 rounds was conducted with 10 psychologists as raters to establish retrieval categories which were then evaluated for accuracy by comparing self-reported intake to observation. Responses were extracted from transcripts of interviews conducted with 89 randomly selected 4th-graders (13 white M, 12 white F, 29 black M, 35 black F) recruited from all 16 4th-grade classes from 3 schools. Students were observed eating lunch, and interviewed within 1.5 hours. For Round 1, centroid hierarchical clustering was used to categorize common sets of responses identified by raters. For Round 2, percent agreement among raters was calculated. For Round 3, "near-consensus" retrieval categories were identified as those used by ≥ 8 raters. Reported use of retrieval categories was tabulated by matches for accurate vs. inaccurate students. Results indicated 23 "near-consensus" categories. Six categories (taste/smell/texture, usual practice, portion left, visual, "I just remembe", semantic preferences) accounted for 59% of responses; 4 (episodic preferences, interactions with others, eating procedure, amount eaten) accounted for another 20%; 5 (oral cue, label, order items eaten, menu, physiological cue) accounted for another 15%; and 8 were rarely used. Less frequently used categories were combined with similar, more frequently used ones, leaving 16 categories. Students used a large variety of retrieval categories when accurately reporting consumption. Categories with differing reported use by accurate vs. inaccurate students were taste/smell/texture (13 vs. 6%), visual (11 vs. 5%), order items eaten (4 vs. 9%), and oral cue (6 vs. 11%), respectively. These categories provide direction for researchers to design specific cues to enhance the accuracy of children's self-reports of diet.