Drinking habits in children are associated with diet quality, but validated assessment tools for large-scale studies in young children are lacking. Therefore, we validated a self-completion 24 h recall questionnaire (RQ) focusing on beverage consumption with a 24 h weighed record (WR).

Thirty-five voluntary participants from the DONALD (Dortmund Nutritional and Anthropometric Longitudinally Designed) Study cohort aged 7–9 years completed the RQ. The illustrated RQ required ticking the number of glasses of seven beverage categories consumed in five time intervals in the previous 24 h. As a reference, parents completed weighed records of their child’s diet. Agreement between the RQ and WR was tested by classification into consumers and non-consumers (kappa coefficients, κ), by the children’s ability to estimate the exact beverage and total volume consumed (Wilcoxon signed-rank test, Spearman rank correlation), and by ranking children according to reported beverage volumes.

The RQ and WR showed a good level of agreement for classifying participants into consumers and non-consumers of the single beverage categories (κ values between 0·78 and 0·94). Correlation coefficients for the volume of the single categories ranged between 0·81 and 0·91. The total beverage volume was overestimated in the RQ, on average, by 114 ml (P = 0·015). Agreement in ranking into tertiles by beverage volume was moderate to good for juice/soft drinks (κ = 0·44), milk (κ = 0·57) and water (κ = 0·70), but fair for the total beverage volume (κ = 0·23).

Our self-completion 24 h RQ could estimate the consumption of several beverage categories among young children at the group level, but quantification of total beverage volume was flawed.