European Physical Education Review

Body mass index (BMI) is increasingly recognized as an inadequate measure for determining obesity in children. Therefore, the aim within this study was to investigate other indirect methods of body fat assessment that could potentially be used in place of BMI. Twenty-four children (boys: 13.8 0.8 yr; girls: 13.3 0.5 yr) participated in this study. Measurements of BMI and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) were obtained, along with percentage body fat (%BF) from skinfolds (SKF), bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) (arm-to-arm, leg-to-leg, arm-to-leg) and air displacement plethysmogra-phy (ADP). BMI was correlated with %BF from ADP (r 0.45, p < 0.05), while WHR was not (r 0.21, p> 0.05). %BF from the SKF method and all BIA methods demonstrated a significant relationship with ADP%BF (p < 0.05). The 95 % limits of agreement (LoA) indicated that individual prediction errors between all BIA methods and ADP were large, while the SKF method showed strong agreement with ADP. The results of this study provide further evidence that the predictive accuracy of indirect methods for determining body fatness varies considerably with children. The findings are discussed in relation to the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP), which is currently operating in primary schools in England