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Analysing the relationship between maternal weight gain and birthweight: exploration of four statistical issues
Author(s) -
Selvin Steve,
Abrams Barbara
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
paediatric and perinatal epidemiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.667
H-Index - 88
eISSN - 1365-3016
pISSN - 0269-5022
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-3016.1996.tb00045.x
Subject(s) - medicine , correlation , statistics , weight gain , explanatory power , variable (mathematics) , pregnancy , birth weight , statistical analysis , statistical model , demography , body weight , mathematics , mathematical analysis , philosophy , geometry , epistemology , sociology , biology , genetics
Summary. Four statistical issues concerning the analysis of birthweight and maternal weight gain during pregnancy are discussed: (1) Part‐whole correlation is described (e.g. the correlation between total maternal weight gain and her infant's birthweight). (2) The choice between a ratio or two separate explanatory variables is explored (e.g. body mass index or using maternal weight and height separately). (3) Two statistical properties (bias and power) when a binary variable replaces a continuous variable are discussed (e.g. consequences of using low birthweight instead of reported birthweight). (4) A model selection procedure is presented to provide a way to select a useful subset of variables from a large number of available explanatory variables to model an outcome variable (e.g. birthweight). These issues are illustrated with a set of 4017 births from Moffitt Hospital at the University of California, San Francisco. Furthermore, these four issues arise in a number of applications of statistical methods to data collected to study the epidemiology of newborn infants.