Parent-reported birth information: birth weight, birth length and gestational age. Validation study in the SENDO project

Abstract

Objective: To test the validity of parent-reported birth information obtained through an online, self-administered questionnaire.

Method: The SENDO project is a prospective and dynamic paediatric cohort of Spanish children aged 4 to 6 years old at recruitment. Objective data from medical birth records were compared to parent-reported data getting intra-class correlation coefficients (ICC) for quantitative variables and weighted Kappa Index for qualitative ones. Percentage of responders and of total agreement was also evaluated.

Results: Parental response rate was over 99% for birth weight and gestational age and 76% for birth length. ICC for birth weight was 0.95 (95% confidence interval [95%CI]: 0.94-0.96) and 0.78 (95%CI: 0.73-0.83) for birth length, both showing very high correlations. The total agreement percentage for gestational age was 97%, and Kappa weighted index was 0.90 (95%CI: 0.89-0.90), showing a very high agreement as well.

Conclusions: We found high correlations and excellent agreement in parent-reported birth data 4 to 6 years after delivery. Our results show parent-reported birth data, especially birth weight, are valid for use in epidemiological research.