Anthropometric measures as fitness indicators in primary school children: The Health Oriented Pedagogical Project (HOPP)

Aims: As children’s fitness continues to decline, frequent and systematic monitoring of fitness is important. Easy-to-use and low-cost methods with acceptable accuracy are essential in screening situations. This study aimed to investigate how the measurements of body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC) and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) relate to selected measurements of fitness in children. Methods: A total of 1731 children from grades 1 to 6 were selected who had a complete set of height, body mass, running performance, handgrip strength and muscle mass measurements. A composite fitness score was established from the sum of sex- and age-specific z-scores for the variables running performance, handgrip strength and muscle mass. This fitness z-score was compared to z-scores and quartiles of BMI, WC and WHtR using analysis of variance, linear regression and receiver operator characteristic analysis. Results: The regression analysis showed that z-scores for BMI, WC and WHtR all were linearly related to the composite fitness score, with WHtR having the highest R² at 0.80. The correct classification of fit and unfit was relatively high for all three measurements. WHtR had the best prediction of fitness of the three with an area under the curve of 0.92 (p < 0.001). Conclusions: BMI, WC and WHtR were all found to be feasible measurements, but WHtR had a higher precision in its classification into fit and unfit in this population.