Printed in U.SA. UNDERESTIMATION OF RELATIVE WEIGHT BY USE OF SELF- REPORTED HEIGHT AND WEIGHT

by use of self-reported height and weight Am J Epidemiol 1987; 125:122-6. Self-reported and measured height and weight were obtained from a repre-sentative sample of 1,598 persons in Auckland, New Zealand during 1982. The accuracy of the self-reported data and its effect on the misclassification of relative weight, as measured by Quetelet index, were examined. The finding that for most participants (75%), self-reported measures were no more than 3.5 cm from their measured height and 2.4 kg from their measured weight indicates that self-reports have a high degree of accuracy. However, the participants consist-ently overestimated their height and underestimated their weight, resulting in an underestimation of relative weight This would have little effect on analyses using the self-reported relative weight measures as a continuous covariate, but mis-classification would occur when using relative weight as a categorical variable. The sensitivities and specificities associated with categorized self-reported rel-ative weight in this study could be used to make adjustments to odds ratios and relative risks that have been calculated from relative weight derived from self