Propelling the Profession with Outcomes and Evidence: Building a Robust Research Agenda at the Academy

Statistical methods and software used in nutrition and dietetics research: A review of the published literature using text mining

AIM

Dietitians must be statistically literate to effectively interpret the scientific literature underpinning the discipline. Despite this, no study has been conducted that objectively identifies common statistical methods and packages specific to current nutrition and dietetics literature. This study aimed to identify statistical methods and software frequently used in nutrition and dietetics research.

METHODS

A text mining approach using the bag-of-words method was applied to a random sample of articles obtained from all journals in the 'Nutrition and Dietetics' subject category within the SCImago Journal and Country Rank portal and published in 2018. A list of 229 statistical terms and 19 statistical software packages was developed to define the search terms to be mined. Statistical information from the methods section of included articles was extracted into Microsoft Excel (2016) for data cleaning. Statistical analyses were conducted in R (Version 3.6.0) and Microsoft Excel (2016).

RESULTS

Seven hundred and fifty-seven journal articles were included. Numerical descriptive statistics were the most common statistical method group, appearing in 83.2% of articles (n = 630). This was followed by specific hypothesis tests (68.8%, n = 521), general hypothesis concepts (58.4%, n = 442), regression (44.4%, n = 336), and ANOVA (30.8%, n = 233). IBM SPSS statistics was the most common statistical software package, reported in 41.7% of included articles.

CONCLUSION

These findings provide useful information for educators to evaluate current statistics curricula and develop short courses for continuing education. They may also act as a starting point for dietitians to educate themselves on typical statistical methods they may encounter.

The International Nutrition Care Process and Terminology Implementation Survey: Towards a Global Evaluation Tool to Assess Individual Practitioner Implementation in Multiple Countries and Languages

BACKGROUND

The Nutrition Care Process (NCP) and NCP Terminology (NCPT) is a systematic framework for critical thinking, decision making, and communication for dietetics practitioners worldwide, aiming to improve quality and patient safety in nutrition care. Although dietetics practitioners in several countries have implemented the NCP/NCPT during recent years, to date there is no globally validated instrument for the evaluation of NCP/NCPT implementation that is available in different languages and applicable across cultures and countries.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was to develop and test a survey instrument in several languages to capture information at different stages of NCP/NCPT implementation across countries and cultures.

SETTING

In this collaboration between dietetics practitioners and researchers from 10 countries, an International NCP/NCPT Implementation Survey tool was developed and tested in a multistep process, building on the experiences from previous surveys. The tool was translated from English into six other languages. It includes four modules and describes demographic information, NCP/NCPT implementation, and related attitudes and knowledge.

METHODS

The survey was reviewed by 42 experts across 10 countries to assess content validity and clarity. After this, 30 dietetics practitioners participated in cognitive interviews while completing the survey. A pilot study was performed with 210 participants, of whom 40 completed the survey twice within a 2- to 3-week interval.

RESULTS

Scale content validity index average was 0.98 and question clarity index was 0.8 to 1.0. Cognitive interviews and comments from experts led to further clarifications of the survey. The repeated pilot test resulted in Krippendorff's α=.75. Subsequently, refinements of the survey were made based on comments submitted by the pilot survey participants.

CONCLUSIONS

The International NCP/NCPT Implementation Survey tool demonstrated excellent content validity and high test-retest reliability in seven different languages and across an international context. This tool will be valuable in future research and evaluation of implementation strategies.