Dr. Peter Wang of the Department of Community Health in the Faculty of Medicine at Memorial Univeristy is a Professor and a researcher in epidemiology. For a number of years, Dr. Wang has been involved in an in-depth study into colorectal cancer, nutrition and diet in Newfoundland and Labrador. In 2010-2011, he received a Project Grant from NLCAHR to conduct a study "Assessing the Validity of a Self-Administered Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) in the Adult Population of Newfoundland and Labrador."
The Food Frequency Questionnaire is used to measure dietary intake in epidemiology and nutritional research. Because the Newfoundland and Labrador diet is relatively unique in North America, standard questionnaires have not been validated for the NL population, creating difficulties in interpreting the results of Dr. Wang's Colorectal Cancer study. For this research, Dr. Wang worked with fellow researchers Lin Liu, Barbara Roebothan, Jennifer Colbourne, Natasha Baker, Christina Tucker, Ann Ryan, Michelle Cotterchio, Guang Sun and Yanqing Yi. They set out to develop a locally-based FFQ which is valid and can be self-administered:
- to examine and revise the existing FFQ based on the experience gained from the NL component of a national colorectal cancer study;
- to validate the revised FFQ against two separate repeated 24-hour recalls in winter and summer among NL adults aged 35-70 years; and ultimately
- to produce a self-administered FFQ that can be understood and completed by an adult resident of the province with less than a high school education.