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David Gunnell, Lee Berney, Paula Holland, Maria Maynard, David Blane, George Davey Smith, Stephen Frankel, Does the misreporting of adult body size depend upon an individual's height and weight? Methodological debate, International Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 33, Issue 6, December 2004, Pages 1398–1399, https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyh301
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In a paper published four years ago in this journal1 we included an assessment of factors influencing the accuracy of self-reported anthropometry in the elderly. The analysis was based on 257 surviving members of the Boyd Orr Cohort aged 56–78 years with both self-reported (questionnaire) and measured values recorded for their weight, height, and leg length.
As well as comparing self-report and measured values using Bland-Altman plots2 we also carried out a multivariable linear regression analysis to investigate factors associated with the difference between self-reported and measured anthropometry (‘misreporting’). The factors examined in these models were age, gender, social class, and other anthropometric values. We also investigated the extent to which mis-reporting was associated with the magnitude of the measured values of stature or weight. For example, we were interested in whether overweight individuals reported their weight less accurately and were more prone to under-reporting. To assess systematic error, the difference between reported and measured anthropometry was used as the dependent variable. To assess random error the difference was again used, but the sign of the difference was removed—so large negative errors were given the same weight as large positive errors and factors associated with inaccuracy, rather than systematic error, can be assessed.
