Abstract
The essential units for testing hypotheses about the influences of ageing and urbanization in the CRONOS (Cross-Cultural Research on the Nutrition of Older Subjects) process are the responses to the questions on the questionnaire and the physical measurements of individuals, aggregated into distributions by age, sex, geography, and their combinations. In the Reconnaissance experience, the number of subjects per country (about 24) was insufficient to provide meaningful group or subgroup averages. However, the process allowed the investigators to get a sense of which measurements were consistent across countries and which were aberrant in some sites. In general, despite the lack of inter-site standardization, most of the items in the protocol seem to have been measured with acceptable consistency and accuracy across geographic areas. Problem areas identified were in the measurement of arm span, the determination of arterial blood pressure, and the accuracy of 24-hour recall methods for total energy and nutrient intakes.