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Validity of self-reported weight, height, and body mass index among African American breast cancer survivors

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Abstract

Purpose

Self-reported weight, height, and body mass index (BMI) are commonly used in cancer epidemiology studies, but information on the validity of self-reports among cancer survivors is lacking. This study aimed to evaluate the validity of these self-reported measures among African American (AA) breast cancer survivors, known to have high obesity prevalence.

Methods

We compared the self-reported and measured values among 243 participants from the Women’s Circle of Health Follow-Up Study (WCHFS), a population-based longitudinal study of AA breast cancer survivors. Multivariable-adjusted linear regressions were used to identify factors associated with reporting errors. We also examined the associations of self-reported and measured BMI with obesity-related health outcomes using multivariable logistic regressions, with hypertension as an example, to evaluate the impact of misreporting.

Results

We found that self-reported and measured values were highly correlated among all and when stratified by participants’ characteristics (intraclass correlation coefficients ≥ 0.99, 0.84, and 0.96 for weight, height, and BMI, respectively). The agreement between BMI categories (normal, overweight and obese) based on self-reported and measured data was excellent (kappa = 0.81). Women who were older, never smoked, had higher grade tumors, or had greater BMI tended to have overestimated BMI calculated from self-reported weight and height. The BMI-hypertension association was similar using self-reported (OR per 5 kg/m2 increase 1.63; 95% CI 1.27–2.10) and measured BMI (1.58; 95% CI 1.23–2.03).

Conclusions

Self-reported weight, height, and BMI were reasonably accurate in the WCHFS.

Implications for Cancer Survivors

Our study supports the use of these self-reported values among cancer survivors when direct measurements are not possible.

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Acknowledgements

We thank all the study participants and staff of WCHFS for their contribution to this study.

Funding

This work was funded by grants from the NIH (R01CA185623, R01CA100598, P01CA151135, P30CA072720, P30CA016056) and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation and a gift from the Philip L. Hubbell family. The first author was partly supported by New Jersey Commission on Cancer Research Post-Doctoral Award #DHFS16PPC013. The New Jersey State Cancer Registry, Cancer Epidemiology Services, and New Jersey Department of Health are funded by the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program of the National Cancer Institute under contract HHSN261201300021I and control no. N01-PC-2013-00021, the National Program of Cancer Registries (NPCR), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under grant NU5U58DP003931-05-00, as well as the State of New Jersey and the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Population Science, Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, 195 Little Albany St., New Brunswick, NJ, 08903, USA

    Bo Qin, Elizabeth A. Szamreta, Hannah Oh & Elisa V. Bandera

  2. Department of Epidemiology, Rutgers School of Public Health, Piscataway, NJ, USA

    Adana A. M. Llanos, Jesse J. Plascak & Kitaw Demissie

  3. Department of Biostatistics, Rutgers School of Public Health, Piscataway, NJ, USA

    Yong Lin

  4. New Jersey State Cancer Registry, New Jersey Department of Health, Trenton, NJ, USA

    Karen Pawlish

  5. Department of Cancer Prevention and Control, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Christine B. Ambrosone & Chi-Chen Hong

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  1. Bo Qin
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  11. Elisa V. Bandera
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bo Qin.

Ethics declarations

The study was approved by the institutional review boards at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey and Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Qin, B., Llanos, A.A.M., Lin, Y. et al. Validity of self-reported weight, height, and body mass index among African American breast cancer survivors. J Cancer Surviv 12, 460–468 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11764-018-0685-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11764-018-0685-9

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