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Multidimensional nature of undernutrition: a statistical approach
University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon.
Umeå university, Sweden.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-1828-6831
2011 (English)In: Journal of Medicine and Medical Sciences, ISSN 2141-9477, Vol. 2, no 2, p. 690-695Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

The statistical assessment of undernutrition is usually restricted to a pairwise analysis of anthropometric indicators. The main objective of this study was to model the associations between underweight, stunting and wasting and to check whether multidimensionality of undernutrition can be justified from a purely statistical point of view. 3742 children aged 0 to 59 months were enrolled in a cross-sectional household survey (2004 Cameroon Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS)). The saturated loglinear model and the multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) showed no interaction and a highly significant association between underweight and stunting (P=0), underweight and wasting (P=0); but not between stunting and wasting (P=0.430). Cronbach's alpha coefficient between weight-for-age, height-for-age and weight-for-height was 0.62 (95% CI 0.59, 0.64). Thus, the study of these associations is not straightforward as it would appear in a first instance. The lack of three-factor interaction and the value of the Cronbach's alpha coefficient indicate that undernutrition is indeed (statistically) multidimensional. The three indicators are not statistically redundant; thus for the case of Cameroon the choice of a particular anthropometric indicator should depend on the goal of the policy maker, as it comes out of this study that no single indicator is to be used for all situations.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2011. Vol. 2, no 2, p. 690-695
Keywords [en]
Stunting, Wasting, Underweight, anthropometric measures, Z-score, Loglinear models, Anthropometric measures
National Category
Nutrition and Dietetics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-68851OAI: oai:DiVA.org:lnu-68851DiVA, id: diva2:1159904
Available from: 2017-11-24 Created: 2017-11-24 Last updated: 2025-02-11Bibliographically approved

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Dapi Nzefa, Léonie

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf