Variability in Waist Circumference Measurements According to Anatomic Measurement Site
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The measurement of waist circumference (WC) is widely advocated as a simple anthropometric marker of health risk; yet there remains no uniformly accepted protocol. This study determined whether the magnitude of WC differs across four measurement sites, and quantified the influence of site on the apparent prevalence of abdominal obesity. The predominantly white sample consisted of 223 men and 319 women (20-67 years). WC was measured using a nonstretching tape at the superior border of the iliac crest, midpoint between the iliac crest and lowest rib, umbilicus, and the minimal waist. Differences in WC across sites were tested using repeated measures ANOVA, adjusted for multiple comparisons. Inter- and intraobserver reliabilities across sites were estimated using intraclass correlation. In women, the mean WC for all sites were significantly different from each other, with the exception of the iliac crest and midpoint. In contrast, no significant differences between sites were found in men. Measurement site had an influence on the apparent prevalence of abdominal obesity (>88/102 cm), ranging from 23 to 34% in men and 31 to 55% in women. The reproducibility of WC was high at all sites and was comparable across levels of BMI. In conclusion, the magnitude of WC is influenced by measurement site, particularly in women. Small differences are amplified when dichotomous cut points rather than a continuum are used to define abdominal obesity. Adopting a standard measurement protocol will facilitate the interpretation and clinical utility of WC for obesity-related risk stratification.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.021 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".