1. Assessing Self-Reporting Statuses of Mother’s and Child’s Weights
Hephzibah Anthony, MD; Rachel Tabak, PhD, RD; Alexandra Morshed MS; Cindy Schwarz, MPH, MS, RD; Allison Phad MPH; Debra Haire-Joshu, PhD
Center for Obesity Prevention and Policy Research, George Warren Brown School of Social Work and Department of Internal Medicine, Washington University, St. Louis, MO
Background & Methods
Results
Background
Understanding and tackling the issue of obesity is a public health challenge.
Obesity is a serious and growing problem because of its association with several chronic non-communicable diseases.
The prevalence of obesity is a key piece of data that is used while making policy changes or decisions.
One of the first challenges in addressing obesity is the accuracy of self-reported weights and heights.
Mothers in the inaccurate reporting status group had a mean weight that was 9.5 kg (21 lbs.) greater than the mean weight of those who accurately reported their weight (p<0.0001).
23% of mothers did not know their child’s weight, and among those who did, the Pearson’s correlation between self-reported and measured weights was 0.86 (p<0.0001).
Analysis from Logistic Regression Models:
Mothers who diet to lose weight were 3.55 times more likely to accurately report their weight that those who do not diet (p<0.0001).
The relative odds of inaccurate vs. accurate reporting of child’s weights was 3.75 times more likely for parents who are single than those who are married or living with a partner (p<0.0001).
The relative odds of inaccurate v.s accurate reporting of child’s weights was 2.39 times more likely for children >4 years of age than children who are < 3 years of age (reference group) (p<0.0001).
Purpose
To evaluate self-reporting statuses of Mother’s and Child’s weights.
To identify any factors like parent, child or family characteristics that could be associated with their reporting statuses.
Analysis of Self-reporting Categories
Methods & Measures
230 mothers who were obese or overweight, participating in an intervention study, were asked to self report weight for them and their child.
Weights were then measured in a clinical setting and the data collected was analyzed using SAS.
Mothers’ and children’s weights were categorized based on their reporting statuses.
Based on previous studies, a difference of 2 kg between self-reported and measured weights was used as a cut-off to categorize mothers as accurate or inaccurate, while for children the a cut-off was 0.5 kg.
Conclusions
Mothers with higher weight are less likely to report their weight accurately.
There is a strong correlation between self-reported and measured weights among children who had their weights reported.
There is need for more research to confirm the characteristics that could be associated with reporting statuses and to identify other possible factors.
Funded by: National Institutes of Health