nutriSHARE

FFQ and 24HR Nutrition Survey in SHARE-CZ

Between wave 10 and wave 11, in the fall 2026, SHARE-CZ will collect detailed data on nutrition. Both the FFQ (Food Frequency Questionnaire) and 24HR (24h Recall Questionnaire) are standard questionnaires used in other major surveys (NICOLA, ELSA, HRS and NHANES variants).

This research project is developed in collaboration with the First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University and General University Hospital. Dr. Tereza Vagnerova is the scientific coordinator at the Department of Geriatrics and Internal Medicine.

Background and Aims

Diet is a key, modifiable determinant of healthy ageing, affecting cardiometabolic risk, frailty, sarcopenia, cognitive decline, and disability trajectories. However, robust diet-health analyses in ageing cohorts require dietary exposure measures that are (i) sufficiently detailed for nutrient- and food-group analyses, (ii) comparable across countries and survey waves, and (iii) feasible in older populations with heterogeneous digital skills and health constraints.

SHARE is uniquely positioned to address diet-related research questions in later life because it combines repeated, harmonized measures of health, function, socioeconomic status, and social networks across many European countries. Yet, diet has historically been under-measured in SHARE relative to its importance for life-course epidemiology. Implementing a Czech Nutrition Survey as a country-specific sub-project linked to SHARE Wave 11 creates high scientific value - it enables integration of dietary exposures with rich SHARE phenotyping and supports cross-country harmonization by aligning with instruments already used in other ageing studies.

Primary research aims of the Nutrition Survey

  1. To quantify key dietary exposures in adults aged 50+ in the Czech SHARE sample, including foods, nutrients, and dietary patterns, and to link these exposures with SHARE’s longitudinal health, functional, and socioeconomic outcomes from a life-course perspective.
  2. To enhance cross-study and cross-country comparability of dietary data within ageing research by aligning nutritional outputs with established European population studies and harmonized food and nutrient constructs.
  3. To improve the validity and interpretability of diet-aging associations by addressing known sources of measurement error in dietary assessment.

Objectives and Content of the Nutrition Survey

Including the collection of newly developed survey measures of nutrition in SHARE data provides important scientific value as it opens up multiple research possibilities:

  1. Diet-ageing trajectories: modeling associations between dietary exposures and longitudinal changes in functional status, frailty, cognition, morbidity, and health service use (leveraging repeated SHARE measures).
  2. Dietary patterns and inequality: analyzing dietary patterns/scores (e.g., PCA-derived patterns, cluster solutions, Mediterranean-style or other diet indices) in relation to socioeconomic position, social networks, and regional variation within an ageing population.
  3. Methodological research: quantifying and correcting measurement error (under-reporting, selective non-response, mode effects) and evaluating feasibility of digital dietary assessment in older adults, including mixed-mode solutions. The Nutrition Survey is based on existing, validated, and internationally used nutrition instruments:

Questionnaires

  • Food Frequency Questionnaire (EPIC-Norfolk FFQ; EPIC-based) - captures habitual intake through a structured list (130 food lines) with standard frequency categories and portion conventions, suitable for long-term exposure ranking and trend comparisons. Download the FFQ questionnaire here.

  • 24-hour dietary recall (MyFood24; 2 administrations) - captures detailed day-level intake (one weekday + one weekend day) with automated nutrient analysis, enabling meal-pattern outputs and more granular food group exposure estimates; validation evidence supports its use in large studies as a scalable alternative to interviewer-based 24HDR. Link to 24HR myfood harmonized questionnaires.

Both questionnaires will be in a website mode with optional CATI mode for respondents unable or unwilling to use the website mode.