Development of a Questionnaire for the Personalized Health Functional Food

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 formulated 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 overall 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 evaluated on a scale from 0 to 1. The final score of each category was calculated as the sum of the scores normalized 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 information, medical history, allergies, prescription medicines, dietary habits, and lifestyle. A question that surveys interest areas was also included to let the responders choose up to three categories for the detailed question 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 symptoms, following the classification of health functional foods by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety. This questionnaire may serve as an evidence-based information collecting tool for a personalized health functional foods recommendation system.