Child health metrics

February 20, 2011

(This article was first published on Matt's Stats n stuff » R, and kindly contributed to R-bloggers)

In analysis of Child Health data, generally z-scores or percentile groupings are used as children do not growth is not linear.

The CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) have released tables of data for calculating these z-scores and percentiles, and here are some scripts for R to calculate these in your sample.

CLICK HERE – To download the script for blood pressure percentile

CLICK HERE – To download the script for obesity (overweight/obesity indicator and z-score)

CLICK HERE – To download the script for height percentile

CLICK HERE – To download the script for waist circumference percentile

Note: these are reasonably straight forward, please check the code. Age can be a ‘tricky one’, given rounding and cut points etc so you’re encouraged to double check your results.