The weights and heights of Mexican-American adolescents: The accuracy of self-reports

Abstract

The accuracy of Mexican-American adolescents' self-reported weights, heights, and body mass indexes was evaluated with data from the Hispanic Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. On average, adolescents with low measured body mass indexes and high measured body mass indexes overestimated and underestimated their weights, respectively. Categories of low and high body mass indexes created by applying cutoffs to reported body mass indexes had low sensitivities. For weight, height, and body mass indexes, measured and reported values were highly correlated. This high correlation suggests that adolescents' reported values can be used as continuous variables in multivariate analyses with only small errors resulting in the coefficients for weight, height, and body mass index.