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Reference Growth Charts for Saudi Arabian Children and Adolescents

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Advances in Social Science Research Using R

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Statistics ((LNSP,volume 196))

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to provide Saudi Arabian population reference growth standards for height, weight, body mass index (BMI), head circumference and weight for length/stature. The estimated distribution centiles are obtained by splitting the population into two separate age groups: infants, birth to 36 months and children and adolescents, age 2 to 19 years. The reference values were derived from cross-sectional data applying the LMS method of Cole and Green (Statistics in Medicine 1992; 11:1305–1319) using the lmsqreg package in R (public domain language for data analysis, 2009). The report provides an overview of how the method has been applied, more specifically how the relevant issues concerning the construction of the growth charts have been addressed, and is illustrated by just using the girls’ weight data (birth to 3 years old). These issues include identifying the outliers, diagnosing the appropriate amounts of smoothing and averaging the reference standards for the overlapping 2- to 3-year age range. The use of ANCOVA has been introduced and illustrated as a tool for making growth standard comparisons between different geographical regions and between genders.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mathematics, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK

    P. J. Foster

  2. Lancashire Business School, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK

    T. Kecojević

Authors
  1. P. J. Foster
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  2. T. Kecojević
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to P. J. Foster .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. Economics, Fordham University, E. Fordham Road 441, Bronx, 10458, U.S.A.

    Hrishikesh D. Vinod

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Foster, P.J., Kecojević, T. (2010). Reference Growth Charts for Saudi Arabian Children and Adolescents. In: Vinod, H. (eds) Advances in Social Science Research Using R. Lecture Notes in Statistics(), vol 196. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1764-5_7

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