The short normal child : growth and psychosocial functioning in the prepubertal years : the Wessex Growth Study
The short normal child : growth and psychosocial functioning in the prepubertal years : the Wessex Growth Study
The Wessex Growth Study is the first large scale community study to monitor the growth of an unselected population of very short children and to assess the impact of their stature on psychological and scholastic development. Over 14,000 school entrants were screened and 180 children found to lie on or below the 3rd height centile. Of these, 140 children, in whom no organic disease could be detected, were enrolled into the study, together with 140 age and sex matched controls of average stature. Definitive data will not be available until the present cohorts are well into adulthood, but in the prepubertal period, the growth and academic progress of the majority of these very short children has given little cause for concern.
Results of psychometric testing demonstrate the apparent normality, at least before puberty, of the self-esteem, behaviour, and academic achievement of a community-based sample of very short children. This conflicts with much of the earlier literature which has reported almost exclusively on samples drawn from clinic populations. Performance on all these measures is related to socio-economic class but not stature.
This study has also examined the science of auxological measurement and made a thorough investigation of the reliability of height data. It concludes that the imprecision of height measurement makes all short-term growth data liable to misinterpretation. In the longer term, the prepubertal growth of very short children is shown to be satisfactory. Although in absolute terms, their rate of growth is less than that of their taller peers, in relative terms, that is, conditional on their height, they grow just as well. A diagnosis of "growth failure", on auxological grounds is, therefore, difficult to sustain, even though these children are likely to remain short.
Short stature is, nevertheless, shown to be a useful marker for previously unidentified pathology, both organic and psychosocial.
University of Southampton
1997
Voss, Linda Denise
(1997)
The short normal child : growth and psychosocial functioning in the prepubertal years : the Wessex Growth Study.
University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.
Record type:
Thesis
(Doctoral)
Abstract
The Wessex Growth Study is the first large scale community study to monitor the growth of an unselected population of very short children and to assess the impact of their stature on psychological and scholastic development. Over 14,000 school entrants were screened and 180 children found to lie on or below the 3rd height centile. Of these, 140 children, in whom no organic disease could be detected, were enrolled into the study, together with 140 age and sex matched controls of average stature. Definitive data will not be available until the present cohorts are well into adulthood, but in the prepubertal period, the growth and academic progress of the majority of these very short children has given little cause for concern.
Results of psychometric testing demonstrate the apparent normality, at least before puberty, of the self-esteem, behaviour, and academic achievement of a community-based sample of very short children. This conflicts with much of the earlier literature which has reported almost exclusively on samples drawn from clinic populations. Performance on all these measures is related to socio-economic class but not stature.
This study has also examined the science of auxological measurement and made a thorough investigation of the reliability of height data. It concludes that the imprecision of height measurement makes all short-term growth data liable to misinterpretation. In the longer term, the prepubertal growth of very short children is shown to be satisfactory. Although in absolute terms, their rate of growth is less than that of their taller peers, in relative terms, that is, conditional on their height, they grow just as well. A diagnosis of "growth failure", on auxological grounds is, therefore, difficult to sustain, even though these children are likely to remain short.
Short stature is, nevertheless, shown to be a useful marker for previously unidentified pathology, both organic and psychosocial.
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Published date: 1997
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Local EPrints ID: 463138
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/463138
PURE UUID: e09f410c-64d8-42cf-aeda-e78cc95191b1
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Date deposited: 04 Jul 2022 20:45
Last modified: 04 Jul 2022 20:45
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Author:
Linda Denise Voss
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