Target Height Calculation for Dutch Population

This function calculates the target height of a child based on the height of the biological parents, using the method proposed by Hermanussen & Cole (2003) with a simplified formula for the Dutch population.

Usage

targetheight(hgtf, hgtm, sex, etn = NULL)

Arguments

hgtf

Numeric vector with the height of the biological father in cm. Can include NA for unknown heights.

hgtm

Numeric vector with the height of the biological mother in cm. Must have the same length as hgtf.

sex

Character vector indicating the sex of the child for which target height is calculated. Must be either "male" or "female".

etn

Ethnicity. Not used in this function, but included for consistency with other functions.

Value

A data.frame with three columns:

y

The calculated target height in cm.

y.sd

The standard deviation of the error term in cm.

z

The target height in SDS, relative to the child reference.

Details

For more details, see Van Dommelen et al. (2012). The formulas are as follows:

For boys:

TH = 44.5 + 0.376 * hgtf + 0.411 * hgtm

For girls:

TH = 47.1 + 0.334 * hgtf + 0.364 * hgtm

If the height of the biological father is unknown, we use:

For boys:

TH = 99.9 + 0.492 * hgtm

For girls:

TH = 96.3 + 0.436 * hgtm

If the mother's height is unknown, the function returns NA as the target height cannot be calculated.

References

Hermanussen M, Cole TJ (2003). "The Calculation of Target Height Reconsidered." Hormone Research, 59, 180–183.

Van Dommelen P, Schonbeck Y, Van Buuren S (2012). "A simple calculation of the target height." Archives of Disease in Childhood, 97, 182.

See also

hermanussencole

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Example: Target height for Dutch children with father height 180 cm and
# mother height 170 cm
# For both a boy and a girl
targetheight(hgtf = c(180, 180), hgtm = c(170, 170), sex = c("male", "female"))

# Handling missing father height
targetheight(hgtf = c(NA, 180), hgtm = c(171, NA), sex = c("male", "male"))
} # }