Yoomin Jeon1,2,, Jung-Hyun Won2,3, David Seung U Lee2,3, Suyeon Hong2,3, Yu-Jin Paek4, BeLong Cho5, Howard Lee1,2,3,6,7

1Department of Applied Biomedical Engineering, Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea 2Center for Convergence Approaches in Drug Development (CCADD), Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea 3Department of Molecular Medicine and Biopharmaceutical Sciences, Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea 4Department of Family Medicine, Hallym University College of Medicine, Chuncheon, Korea 5Institute on Aging, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea 6Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Seoul National University Hospital, Seoul, Korea 7Advanced Institute of Convergence Technology, Suwon, Korea


Background: This study describes the development of a multi-dimensional questionnaire for the personalized recommendation of health functional foods.
Methods: The questionnaire was designed to include two parts: common and detailed. Each question was for- mulated based on clinical evidence and physician- administered diagnostic tools provided by reputable sources such as government agencies and medical institutions. The common questions were intended to assess over- all health status. The detailed questions were organized into 28 categories based on the classification of health functional foods’ health claims by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. Each question’s response was eval- uated on a scale from 0 to 1. The final score of each category was calculated as the sum of the scores normal- ized by the number of questions in each category. Two expert physicians in health functional food assessed the content validity of the questionnaire, and the questionnaire was revised accordingly.
Results: A total of 31 common questions evaluated overall health conditions based on demographic in- formation, medical history, allergies, prescription medicines, dietary habits, and lifestyle. A question that sur- veys interest areas was also included to let the responders choose up to three categories for the detailed ques- tion part. A total of 173 detailed questions assessed risk factors and symptoms relevant to each health claim.
Conclusions: This questionnaire recommends health functional foods by measuring health risks and symp- toms, following the classification of health functional foods by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. This ques- tionnaire may serve as an evidence-based information collecting tool for a personalized health functional foods recommendation system.
Korean J Health Promot 2022;22(1):26-39

Keywords: Dietary supplements, Health surveys, Diagnostic self evaluation, Health promotion, Delivery of health care