ArticleArchives of disease in childhood2002
The treatment of parental height as a biological factor in studies of birth weight and childhood growth.
Article in Archives of disease in childhood, 2002. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Comparison of adult height prediction using bone age and body composition for growth assessment in Korean children.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Decline in the negative association between low birth weight and cognitive ability.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
- Practical Application of Linear Growth Measurements in Clinical Research in Low- and Middle-Income Countries.Hormone research in paediatrics · 2017Review
- Assessing the Causal Relationship of Maternal Height on Birth Size and Gestational Age at Birth: A Mendelian Randomization Analysis.PLoS medicine · 2015Article
- Determinants of birthweight: gender based analysis.Maternal and child health journal · 2008Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Parental height is frequently treated as a biological variable in studies of birth weight and childhood growth. Elimination of social variables from multivariate models including parental height as a biological variable leads researchers to conclude that social factors have no independent effect on the outcome. This paper challenges the treatment of parental height as a biological variable, drawing on extensive evidence for the determination of adult height through a complex interaction of genetic and social factors. The paper firstly seeks to establish the importance of social factors in the determination of height. The methodological problems associated with treatment of parental height as a purely biological variable are then discussed, illustrated by data from published studies and by analysis of data from the 1958 National Childhood Development Study (NCDS). The paper concludes that a framework for studying pathways to pregnancy and childhood outcomes needs to take account of the complexity of the relation between genetic and social factors and be able to account for the effects of multiple risk factors acting cumulatively across time and across generations. Illustrations of these approaches are given using NCDS data.
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Registered trials
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