Readme file

SERIES A 
Statistics in Society

Ehrenberg law-like relationship and anthropometry by N. Forcheh, Journal of the Royal Statistics Society, Series A, Statistics in Society, Volume 165 (2002), Part 1, pages 155 - 172.

The data and programs comprise the following files:

a) Contents

1. A627.dat Nutritional data of Ngamiland under-fives: (ASCII format)

2. zhfa.sps SPSS syntax file for computing
z-scores for heigth-for-age

3. zwfa.sps SPSS syntax file for computing
z-scores for weigth-for-age

4. zwfh.sps SPSS syntax file for computing
z-scores for weigth-for-height

1.1 Description of A627.dat

The Data file A627.DAT contains 26 variables.
The data have been written in fixed format, with the data layout and formats as follows:

Variable

Start
End
Format
Col Col DISTRICT 1 2 F2.0
CHILD_NO 3 4 F2.0
CHLD_SEX 5 5 F1.0
WT_BIRTH 6 9 F4.0
BRE_FED 10 10 F1.0
NMEAL 11 11 F1.0
AGE 12 15 F4.0
SEX_HEAD 16 16 F1.0
AGE_HEAD 17 18 F2.0
MSTART 19 19 F1.0
EDU_HEAD 20 21 F2.0
ILL2WKS 22 22 F1.0
ZZ 23 24 F2.0
ZHFA 25 30 F6.2
ZWFA 31 36 F6.2
ZWFH 37 42 F6.2
ZSD_WFH 43 43 F1.0
ZSD_WFA 44 44 F1.0
ZSD_HFA 45 45 F1.0
LOG_WT 46 50 F5.1
HT_METRE 51 55 F5.2
E_LOG_WT 56 61 F6.3
EDLEVEL 62 69 F8.0
DSTAT 70 76 F7.3
EH_NSTAT 77 77 F1.0
EH_WFH1 78 78 F1.0

1.2 Variables and value Labels for A627.dat
DISTRICT - DISTRICT  
51 Ngamiland West
52 Ngamiland East 		 
CHLD_SEX - SEX OF CHILD  
1 Male
2 Female 		 
WT_BIRTH - WGT AT BIRTH OF BIRTH OF CHILD BRE_FED - CHILD BREAST FED  
1 Yes
2 No		  
NMEAL - NUMBER OF MEALS
1 1 Meal
2 2 Meals
3 3 Meals
4 4 Meals
5 5 Meals
6 Exlusively-b-fed		  
AGE - Age in Months of Child  

SEX_HEAD - Sex of Head of House hold
1 Male
2 Female

  
AGE_HEAD - Age of Head of Household
0 M Less than 1 year
98 Over 97 years
99 M Not Known 		 
MSTART - Marial Status of Head of HHold
1 Married
2 Living together
3 Never married
5 Separated
6 Divorced
7 Widowed 		 
EDU_HEAD - Level of Education of Head of HHold
1 Primary STD 1
2 Primary STD 2
3 Primary STD 3
4 Primary STD 4
5 Primary STD 5
6 Primary STD 6
7 Primary STD 7
8 Unknown Primary
11 Secondary 1
12 Secondary 2
13 Secondary 3
14 Secondary 4
15 Secondary 5
16 Unknown Secondar
21 Post Sec. Cert.
22 Post Sec. Diplom
23 Post Sec. Degree
24 Post Degree
25 Unknwn Post Sec.
99 Never Attended 		 
ILL2WKS - ILL 2 WEEK
1 Yes 2 No 		 
ZZ - Cases with missing obs in one or more var.
0 1+ missing
1 No Missing 		 
ZHFA - Standardised Z-score for Height for Age  
ZWFA - Standardised Z-score for Weight for Age  
ZWFH - Standardised Z-score for Weight for Height  
ZSD_ WFH - Weight for Height (Wasting)
1 Severe
2 Moderate
3 Normal 		 
ZSD_WFA - Weight for Age (Malnourished)
1 Severe
2 Moderate
3 Normal 		 
ZSD_HFA - Height for Age (Stunting)
1 Severe
2 Moderate
3 Normal 		 
LOG_WT - Log10(Weight in Kg)  
HT_METRE - Height in Metres  
E_LOG_WT - Fitted Log-Wt = 0.8h+0.39  
EDLEVEL - Education Level of Head  
DSTAT - Ehrenberg's Deviation Scores (Log(W) - (0.8h+0.39)  
EH_NSTAT - Nutritional Status based on Ehrenbergs Adjusted Relationship
1 Severe
2 Moderate
3 Normal 		 
EH_WFH1 - Nutritional Status based on Ehrenbergs Relationship
1 Severe
2 Moderate
3 Normal		  
 

2) A Note about the .SPS files

The files are text files and can be read and modified using any editor. These files can be used to compute the corresponding z-scores, with the names of the variables: height, weight and age changed to correspond to those used in your working data file. The means and standard deviations used are based on the NCHS/WHO recommended references discussed in the paper.

The weight-for-height program includes the variable "age" so that it can be used to compute both weight-for-length (lying height) and weight-for-stature (standing height). Here the NCHS cut-of at 24months is used, but modifications could be made if a child under 24months was measured standing, or a child over 24months was measured lying.
The programs can also be modified to compute z-scores with different means and/or standard deviations.

Consider a typical command line: IF(QF492=1 and Age = 0 ) ZHFA = (Ht_cm - 50.5 )/ 2.3.
Here, QF492 represents the variable, "Gender of child": 1=male, 2=female.
The values: 50.5 and 2.3 are respectively, the expected height (cm) and standard deviation of a newborn boy.

3. Contact
Dr. N. Forcheh,
Department of Statistics,
Universtity of Botswana,
Private Bag UB00705, Gaborone,
Botswana
E-mail: NForcheh@Excite.com
Tel: 267-355 2695

Dataset (forcheh.zip 21kb)

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