5. Quality Assurance

Example 3:

An 11 year old girl was measured by the Measurement Teams in training. The stature measures for this cooperative young girl ranged from 146.5 to 148.0 cm. This data would place her at between the 50th and 75th percentile for stature. However, her age was miscalculated or the data was misplotted and her data was plotted at age 10 years. This placed her at the 90 to 95th percentile for stature.

The wide range in measures points to the need for reliability and accuracy in measures even with older, cooperative individuals. The importance of accurate calculation of age and accurate plotting on the growth chart are also illustrated here.

Recording mistakes are often a major source of error. These errors are mainly the result of misreading the scales, being interrupted before recording the measurement, and sometimes transposing the digit when recording the measurement.