Compatibility of household budget and individual nutrition surveys: results of the preliminary analysis.

: The EU-supported project entitled: "Compatibility of household budget and individual nutrition surveys and disparities in food habits" aimed at comparing individualised household budget survey (HBS) data with food consumption values derived from individual nutrition surveys (INS). The present paper provides a brief description of the methodology applied for rendering the datasets at a comparable level. Results of the preliminary evaluation of their compatibility are also presented. A non parametric modelling approach was used for the individualisation (age and gender-specific) of the food data collected at household level, in the context of the national HBSs and the bootstrap technique was used for the derivation of 95% confidence intervals. For each food group, INS and HBS-derived mean values were calculated for twenty-four research units, jointly defined by country (four countries involved), gender (male, female) and age (younger, middle-aged and older). Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated. The results of this preliminary analysis show that there is considerable scope in the nutritional information derived from HBSs. Additional and more sophisticated work is however required, putting particular emphasis on addressing limitations present in both surveys and on deriving reliable individual consumption point and interval estimates, on the basis of HBS data.