Validation of remote height and weight assessment in a rural randomized clinical trial

Background: The purpose of this study is to describe and assess a remote height and weight protocol that was developed for an ongoing trial conducted during the SARS COV-2 pandemic. Methods: Thirty-eight rural families (children 8.3 +/- 0.7 years; 68% female; and caregivers 38.2 +/- 6.1 years) were provided detailed instructions on how to measure height and weight. Families obtained measures via remote data collection (caregiver weight, child height and weight) and also by trained staff. Differences between data collection methods were examined. Results: Per absolute mean difference analyses, slightly larger differences were found for child weight (0.21 +/- 0.21 kg), child height (1.53 +/- 1.29cm), and caregiver weight (0.48 +/- 0.42 kg) between school and home measurements. Both analyses indicate differences had only minor impact on child BMI percentile (- 0.12, 0.68) and parent BMI (0.05, 0.13). Intraclass coefficients ranged from 0.98 to 1.00 indicating that almost all of the variance was due to between person differences and not measurement differences within a person. Conclusion: Results suggest that remote height and weight collection is feasible for caregivers and children and that there are minimal differences in the various measurement methods studied here when assessing group differences. These differences did not have clinically meaningful impacts on BMI. This is promising for the use of remote height and weight measurement in clinical trials, especially for hard-to reach-populations.