Abstract
BackgroundThe measurement of head circumference (HC) is widely used in clinical and research settings as a proxy of neural growth. Although it could aid data collection, no studies have explored either the reliability of adult self-measurements or parental measurements of young children. This study therefore aimed to examine whether adult self and parental measurement of HC constitute reliable data.FindingsA total of 57 adults (32 male) were asked to measure their HC twice following written instructions (adult self-measurement). These measures were compared to those of a researcher independently measuring the same participant’s HC twice. Additionally, mothers of 25 children (17 male) were also asked to measure their child’s HC (parental measure), and again this was compared to researcher measurements of the child’s HC. The intraclass correlation coefficient between adult self- and researcher measurement was 0.84 and between parent and researcher measurement was 0.99. The technical error of measurement was also acceptable, within the range of a skilled anthropometrist.ConclusionsThe high degree of agreement between researcher and adult self-measurement/parental measurement of HC demonstrates that these different assessors produce similarly reliable and reproducible data. This suggests adult self- and parental measurements can reliably be used for data collection to enable valid large-scale developmental and clinical studies of HC.
Highlights
The measurement of head circumference (HC) is widely used in clinical and research settings as a proxy of neural growth
The high degree of agreement between researcher and adult self-measurement/parental measurement of HC demonstrates that these different assessors produce reliable and reproducible data
This suggests adult self- and parental measurements can reliably be used for data collection to enable valid large-scale developmental and clinical studies of HC
Summary
The measurement of head circumference (HC) is widely used in clinical and research settings as a proxy of neural growth It could aid data collection, no studies have explored either the reliability of adult self-measurements or parental measurements of young children. The authors are unaware of standardized guidelines for measuring HC and different agencies recommend different tape measure tools and techniques (e.g., [14]), there appears to be consensus that the tape measure must be pulled snugly and that the maximum distance around the head should be recorded To this end, the current study investigated whether (a) adults can reliably measure their own HC (adult self-measure), and (b) whether parents can reliably measure their child’s HC (parental measure). With anthropometric measurements, technical error of measurements (TEM), the standard deviation of the difference between repeated measurements, should be calculated rather than ICC, which does not account for bias in measurements [16]
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