Reliability of anthropometric data obtained in children seen at the Primary Public Healthcare Service Network in Alagoas, Brazil

Revista Brasileira de Epidemiologia

Lima, Maria Amália de Alencar¹  Oliveira, Maria Alice Araújo¹  Ferreira, Haroldo da Silva¹ 

[1] Universidade Federal de Alagoas

关键词: Anthropometry;    Nutritional Surveillance;    Information Systems;    Reliability;    Technical Measurement Error;   

DOI  :  10.1590/S1415-790X2010000100007

学科分类：过敏症与临床免疫学

来源: SciELO

【 摘 要 】

INTRODUCTION:Monitoring child growth is a very important tool not only to build useful indicatorsfor the evaluation and planning of public policies, but also for appropriatecare to child health. In order to accomplish that anthropometric data from servicesneed to present satisfactory reliability.
OBJECTIVE: To investigate the reliability of weight and height variablesobtained from children at public healthcare services (PHS) of Alagoas.
METHODS: To build the sample, 20 municipalities were drawn among the102 of the state. Then, two PHS were drawn per municipality, and in these, aboutten children under five years. The final sample consisted of 40 PHS and 347children. Anthropometric measures (weight and height) were taken (1) duringroutine service (S); (2) by the researcher using standard equipment (R), and(3) by the researcher using service equipment (RS).
RESULTS: The Kappa test indicated a "substantial" level of agreement(K=0.69) in the classifications of weight-for-age (WA) between S and R and "almostperfect" (K = 0.83) in those between RS and R. Regarding height-for-age (HA),the level of agreement between S and R was "fair" (K = 0.27), to "moderate"(K = 0.56) between RS and R. A Technical Measurement Error according to agegroups (> 24 months) indicated problems in the technique andequipment. Measurements of body weight obtained in PHS routine were systematicallyoverestimated (p<0.05; sign test), leading to low sensitivity, highspecificity and a high rate of false negatives (38.5% for WA and 57.1% for HA).
CONCLUSION: The low reliability observed for the height variable cautionsagainst its utilization to build health indicators, until the scenario can beimproved. The weight variable may be used, but its quality must be improvedby training anthropometrists, and through the acquisition and maintenance ofequipment.

【 授权许可】

CC BY