SF involved in designing the survey, drafting the manuscript and revising it critically for important intellectual content.
All authors (AM, AQ, MB) contributed to the study design, development of the ADULT survey, drafting of the manuscript, and have given final approval of the version submitted for publication/published.
JP initiated the idea of a pre-guideline survey, drafted the survey, participated in identifying potential practitioners to send the survey to, and edited the manuscript.
__________________________ 1 Aga Khan University, Pakistan Medical Research Council and Nutrition Wing, Ministry of Health, 'Pakistan National Nutrition Survey 2011' (draft), May 2012, http://pakresponse.info/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=scqw_AUZ5Dw%3D&taccessed&mid=752, accessed 13 December 2012.
A working group consisting of all authors gathered regularly to give feedback and make improvements on each survey draft and the final guidelines.
Agreement was reached regarding inclusion/exclusion criteria; a conceptual framework of domains; translation of the original template items into an online survey format; reviews of survey draft iterations until final consensus of item inclusion, question structure and analysis processes.
In order to ensure quality, this survey was developed according to the following steps: (1) choice of the method to approach respondents (in this case, email and social networks), (2) selection and definition of the variables to measure, (3) identification of the items in each variable, (4) description of the instructions, and (5) deployment of a pilot test of the survey draft.
YR participated in carrying out the study surveys and drafting the manuscript.
All authors made substantial contributions to the conception and design of the research study, including drafting survey questions.
GL designed the study, conducted the survey, and drafted the article.
JH contributed to study design, supervised administration of the postal survey and drafted the manuscript.
