Many female athletes and physically active women fail to consume enough energy to meet their bodies' needs, jeopardizing their reproductive and bone health and athletic performance, according to prior studies by researchers at Penn State and elsewhere. Measuring energy deficiency can be a barrier to understanding the problem, however, because it requires extensive laboratory testing or invasive blood collection.
To evaluate the risk for energy deficiency more easily, a team of researchers in the Penn State Department of Kinesiology developed and validated a brief, online questionnaire. It can be used by athletic directors, doctors, coaches, dietitians, athletes or any interested person to determine whether an active, young adult woman may be at risk for energy deficiency.
A study describing the development and validation of the questionnaire, called the Female Energy Deficiency Questionnaire (FED-Q), was recently published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise.
