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As a nutritionist, personal trainer, or dietitian to help your clients build healthier, happier lives and make positive changes, you must know what they're up to when they aren't in your office.
A nutrition survey is simply a systematic gathering of factual information or data that pertains to the nutritional status of a targeted population inside a certain geographic area. The information obtained through this nutritional survey tool may be used to prepare nutrition assessments.
Nutrition online survey software is the perfect tool for pinpointing exactly where your clients require the most help. What are the challenges they face and what goals are they looking to achieve? You can use these surveys to get an idea of their exercise and food habits or if perhaps they smoke or not. Using the feedback you receive through your surveys can help you and your clients make better body-mind connections.
How to Conduct a Nutrition Survey Properly
When it’s time to design your nutrition survey, it's essential you clearly define the goals of the survey and what data you're looking for. Nutrition data may be used for multiple purposes. Some examples would be:
* Measuring school feeding programs coverage
* Providing baseline nutrition information for tracking changes over time a supplementation intervention imposed
* Measuring the prevalence of anemia in any given geographical area
You'll want to have a set of questions on your survey software that complement the purpose behind your survey adequately. You may wish to implement preliminary research to help with the development of a quality nutrition survey.
Ensure you have a baseline before you begin a nutrition, behavior modification or exercise program with new clients. Online survey software can help you find out about weight and height, nutrition and health, diet and exercise and smoking habits. Find out if your clients are trying to change their habits during a stressful period at home or work and use this feedback to help them come up with ideal coping strategies.
To recap, general considerations may include:
- Defining clear goals and a purpose for your research.
- Conducting preliminary research, if needed, to provide awareness and context of vulnerable groups.
- Defining your targeted geographic area and ensure you have a sufficient sample size.
- Developing a set of indicators for capturing various aspects of malnutrition (i.e. anthropometry, dietary energy intake, socioeconomic status, etc.) and justifying their use in context.
- Defining a timeline for the research and determining if you can estimate nutritional trends over time with available resources.
- Using qualitative techniques for assessing food behaviors and perceptions, responses to insecurity of food and coping techniques and cultural interventions acceptability.
- Providing baseline information for evaluating the impact of interventions over time on a population.
- Using well-informed and innovative methods of investigating underlying reasons for malnutrition.
There are many more considerations, but these will get you started.
So, are you meeting your objectives as far as helping your clients? If not, why not send them out a nutrition survey to gather their feedback. Are your clients satisfied with your services and how you work with them? Use surveys to gather essential feedback to help you improve your strategies of helping your clients with their nutritional needs.
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