Evaluating the Reproducibility of a Beverage Intake Questionnaire for Caloric Estimation Among Adolescents in Iraq
This study demonstrates that the 12-item Arabic Beverage Intake Questionnaire (BEVQ-A) is a reliable and reproducible tool for accurately assessing short-term beverage intake and caloric estimation among Arabic-speaking adolescents in Iraq.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
Adolescence is a pivotal chapter in human development, a time when the body grows rapidly and habits formed today often set the course for health decades later. During these years, what young people drink matters as much as what they eat. Sugary drinks, in particular, have been linked to a range of health issues, from weight gain to dental problems. To understand these risks, scientists need to ask teenagers what they have been drinking. But asking is harder than it sounds. Young people may forget what they had yesterday, or they might struggle to guess how much they consumed. If the questions asked are confusing or if the answers change wildly from one week to the next, the data becomes unreliable. Without a trustworthy way to measure these habits, public health officials cannot design effective programs to help.
In Iraq, where the consumption of sugary beverages is high among teenagers, researchers faced this exact challenge. They needed a tool to measure drink intake that worked well in the local language and culture. They had already created an Arabic version of a standard survey called the Beverage Intake Questionnaire, but they needed to prove that it gave consistent results. If a teenager filled out the survey today and then filled it out again a month later, would they give the same answers? If the answers changed too much, the tool would be useless for tracking health trends. A team of researchers from Iraq and Malaysia set out to test this specific question among adolescents in the city of Kut.
The study focused on 83 teenagers between the ages of 16 and 18. The researchers asked these students to complete the Arabic Beverage Intake Questionnaire twice, with a one-month gap between the two sessions. The survey asked about their usual drinking habits over the past month, covering a wide variety of drinks including water, milk, fruit juices, soft drinks, energy drinks, and tea or coffee. The students reported how much they drank in terms of volume, weight, and calories. By comparing the two sets of answers, the team could see if the questionnaire was stable enough to be used in future research.
The results showed that the questionnaire was highly reliable for most types of drinks. When the researchers looked at the total amount of milk consumed, the answers from the first and second surveys matched very closely. The same was true for the total amount of all beverages combined. The consistency was so strong that the researchers could be confident that the tool was capturing a true picture of what the teenagers were drinking, rather than just random guesses. For sugar-sweetened beverages, which are a major public health concern, the tool also performed well, showing good consistency between the two rounds of questioning.
There were a few small variations in the data, but they did not undermine the overall success of the study. For instance, when measuring the weight of sugary drinks in grams, the numbers shifted slightly between the two surveys, suggesting that some teenagers might have changed their specific brand or type of drink during that month. However, the total volume and the total calories reported for these drinks remained steady. This indicates that while the specific products might change, the overall habit of drinking sugary beverages is stable enough to be measured accurately. The researchers also found that the tool worked less consistently for drinks that teenagers do not consume every day, such as energy drinks or black coffee without milk. This is expected, as habits that happen rarely are harder to remember accurately than daily routines.
The study concluded that the Arabic Beverage Intake Questionnaire is a solid, reproducible tool for measuring what Iraqi teenagers drink. It is short enough to keep students engaged and detailed enough to calculate the total calories they consume. Because the survey produces consistent results, it can now be used with confidence to track drinking habits across the country. This capability is vital for understanding how diet affects the health of young people in the region and for designing better strategies to improve their well-being. The researchers noted that while the tool works well for general habits, future studies should test it in different seasons and with younger age groups to ensure it remains accurate in all situations. For now, however, the evidence confirms that this questionnaire is ready to help scientists and health officials listen clearly to the drinking habits of adolescents.
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