Lence, Sergio H.

Proceeding, International Conference on Agricultural Policies and Development Strategies - Food Security and Agricultural Marketing, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, (September 3 2002): 1-37.

Food intake surveys and food expenditure surveys are the two most popular methods to obtain information about nutrition. The present study examines the accuracy of the nutrition measures calculated from such surveys. An econometric model is advanced to draw inferences about the measurement errors (MEs) obtained from food intake and food expenditure surveys. The usefulness of the proposed model is illustrated with an application to two of the rare survey data sets in which information about both food intakes and food expenditures were simultaneously collected. Results suggest that MEs in the data employed for the estimation of energy consumption are substantial. The study discusses existing literature that provide ample evidence about potential reasons as to why survey data may exhibit far greater ME problems than might be expected.