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Accuracy of height and weight data from child health records

L D Howe1, K Tilling, D A Lawlor

  • 1Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK. laura.howe@bristol.ac.uk

Archives of Disease in Childhood
|August 20, 2009
PubMed

Insights

Child health records provide accurate height and weight measurements for children over 8 months old. These routine data are reliable for clinical care and research, showing no significant systematic bias.

Area of Science:

  • Pediatrics
  • Growth Monitoring
  • Biostatistics

Background:

  • Limited understanding of the accuracy of routinely collected child health record measurements.
  • Widespread use of these records in research and clinical settings necessitates accuracy assessment.
  • Research measurements serve as the gold standard for evaluating record accuracy.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To assess the accuracy of height and weight measurements in child health records.
  • To compare routinely collected data with gold-standard research measurements.
  • To determine potential biases in routinely collected growth data.

Main Methods:

  • Comparison of height/length and weight measurements from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children with child health records.
  • Inclusion of data from multiple age points: 4, 8, 12, 18, 25, and 43 months.
  • Standardization of growth data using standard deviation scores (SDS) based on the UK 1990 growth reference to adjust for age differences.

Main Results:

  • Mean weight SDS differences were minimal (<=0.08), with predicted differences <=0.1 kg.
  • Mean height SDS differences were <=0.45, with predicted differences <=0.9 cm.
  • Accuracy was slightly lower at 4 months but improved with reduced age differences; no significant bias related to sex, social class, or anthropometry was found.

Conclusions:

  • Routinely collected height/length and weight data demonstrate compatibility with no systematic bias in children over 8 months old.
  • The findings support the continued use of these routine measurements in clinical practice.
  • The data's reliability also supports their application in research studies.
Abstract

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