Agreement between values self-reported and measured of body mass and height for diagnosis of nutritional status in physical education academics

Abstract

Introduction: Self-reported body mass and height have been increasingly used in studies, especially those involving large sample sizes. Objective: To evaluate the agreement between measured and self-reported Body Mass (BM) and height to
evaluate the Nutritional Status (NS) in physical education students. Methods: The sample was composed by 301 students (56.5% women) who reported their BM and height, in addition to the measure of these variables by Welmy electronic scale and stadiometer, respectively. The Body Mass Index (BMI) was calculated by the relation between body mass (kg) and height (m2). Results: Although differences were observed among some means, the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) showed good agreement, ranging from 0.94 to 0.99. When the analysis involved groups, according to the NS, the results showed low agreement only for BMI from the obesity group (0.57) and the other ICC values were predominantly above 0.90. After the categorization of NS, the correlation between the frequencies was considered good (0.82). When using Bland and Altman technique, it was observed that the mean difference between selfreported and measured values was close to zero (0.36 kg/m²), with a Confidence Interval (95%CI) ranging from -1.18 to 1.91 kg/m². Conclusion: Satisfactory evidences were observed for the utilization of the self-reported values of BM and stature for the assessment of the nutritional state, being a valid and safe option for this population.