TABLE 1.

Strategies used to evaluate the HEI-2010 and to re-evaluate the HEI-2005¹

Question	Strategy
Construct validity2
Does the index give maximum scores to menus developed by nutrition experts to illustrate high diet quality?	Computed scores for sample menus for USDA Food Patterns, DASH Eating Plan, Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating, and AHA No-Fad Diet (Table 2)
Does the index allow for sufficient variation in scores among individuals?	Estimated percentiles of component and total scores (Table 3)
Does the index distinguish between groups with known differences in diet quality; that is, does it have concurrent criterion validity?	Compared scores of men and women, younger and older adults, and smokers and nonsmokers (Table 4)
Does the index measure diet quality independent of diet quantity?	Estimated Pearson correlations between component scores and energy intake (Table 5 and Supplemental Table 2)
What is the underlying structure of the index; that is, does it have >1 dimension?	Estimated structure by using a principle components analysis (Fig. 1)
Reliability
How internally consistent is the total score?	Determined Cronbach’s coefficient α
What are the relations among the index components?	Estimated Pearson correlations between component scores (Table 5 and Supplemental Table 2)
Which components have the most influence on the total score?	Estimated correlations between each component and the sum of all others (Table 5 and Supplemental Table 2)

¹DASH, Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension; HEI, Health Eating Index.

²Content validity was established previously (14).