Self-Reported Body Weight and Height: An Assessment Tool for Identifying Children with Overweight/Obesity Status and Cardiometabolic Risk Factors Clustering

• Published in: Maternal and child health journal 2013-02, Vol.17 (2), p.282-291
• Main Authors: Chan, Noel P. T., Choi, Kai C., Nelson, E. Anthony S., Sung, Rita Y. T., Chan, Juliana C. N., Kong, Alice P. S.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agreements; Body Height; Body Mass Index; Body Weight; Cardiovascular Diseases - diagnosis; Cardiovascular Diseases - epidemiology; Care and treatment; Child; Children & youth; Childrens health; Cluster Analysis; Correlation coefficient; Cross-Sectional Studies; Diagnosis; Female; Gynecology; Health risks; Hong Kong - epidemiology; Humans; Male; Mass Screening; Maternal and Child Health; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Metabolic Diseases - diagnosis; Metabolic Diseases - epidemiology; Nursing schools; Obesity; Obesity in children; Overweight; Overweight - diagnosis; Overweight - epidemiology; Parents & parenting; Patient outcomes; Pediatrics; Population Economics; Predictive Value of Tests; Prevalence; Prevalence studies (Epidemiology); Public Health; Questionnaires; Reproducibility of Results; Risk Assessment - methods; Risk Factors; Schools; Self Report; Sociology; Surveys
• ISSN: 1092-7875; 1573-6628
• DOI: 10.1007/s10995-012-0972-4

Body mass index (BMI) is commonly used for assessing body fat. Self-reported body weight and height derived BMI (SRDBMI) is a simple, low cost and non-invasive assessment tool and it may be a useful self-reported assessment tool to monitor the prevalence of overweight/obesity in community settings and for epidemiological research. We assessed the agreement of BW and BH between assessor measured and child self-reported values and evaluated the diagnostic ability of SRDBMI to identify children with overweight/obesity status and cardiometabolic risk factors (CMRFs) clustering. A cross-sectional study was conducted in school settings using a cluster sampling method. A total of 1,614 children aged 6–18 years were included in the analysis. Children were given a questionnaire to complete at home prior to the anthropometric measurements and blood taking at the schools. There was almost perfect agreement on BW, BH and BMI between self-reported and measured values [intraclass correlation coefficients ranged from 0.93 (95% CI: 0.93–0.94) to 0.99 (95% CI: 0.98–0.99)]. About half of the children reported their BW and BH absolute values within 1 kg and 2 cm of measured values, respectively. The SRDBMI demonstrated good diagnostic ability for identifying children with overweight/obesity status (sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values ranged from 0.83 to 0.98) and CMRFs clustering (AUC-ROCs values of BMI between measured and self-reported values were close ranging from 0.85 to 0.89). Self-reported BW and BH demonstrated almost perfect agreement with measured values and could substantially identify children with overweight/obesity status and CMRFs clustering.