Illness History and Physical Growth

Abstract

The previous studies in this series^1,2utilized illness histories covering time periods of 6 months. For the present study, health records were obtained extending over time periods of 4 years (girls) and 5 years (boys). No subject duplication occurs in the 3 studies; independent samples of Iowa City white schoolchildren were drawn. Martens and Meredith¹used 90 kindergarten children between ages 4.7 years and 6.4 years; Evans²used 93 nursery school children between ages 2.5 years and 5.5 years; and the present study involves 135 elementary school children between ages 5.0 years and 10.0 years. Martens and Meredith¹investigated associations between amount of absence from school for illness during a 6-month period, beginning in the autumn (x-variable) and each of 25 selected measures of body size, body form, and growth velocity (y-variables). None of their correlation findings was of sufficient magnitude to be useful