Measurement Equivalence of E‐Scale and In‐Person Clinic Weights

Abstract

Objective: The current study aimed to determine whether electronic scale (e-scale) weight measurements are concordant with in-person clinic weights.Methods: E-scale and in-person clinic weight measurements from 248 active duty military personnel enrolled in a weight-loss intervention study were used. E-scale and clinic measurements were matched and tested to determine whether measurements were significantly different from each other. Equivalence between the two measurements was tested among the cohort and when stratifying by gender, BMI, race, and age. The study also examined whether matching the times of clinic and e-scale measurements or averaging multiple measurements was optimal, and whether using e-scale and clinic measurements from the same day or across a specified amount of time was acceptable. Results: Overall, e-scale and clinic measurements were significantly different from each other but did not differ from equality. Additionally, using e-scale and clinic weight measurements that were taken on the same day may be a preferable method compared with using measurements within a week of each other, which leads to weight underprediction among e-scale measurements.Conclusions: E-scales display good measurement concordance. E-scales may be helpful when studying highly mobile populations, such as military personnel, and could potentially eliminate the need for in-person visits.

Associations between the built environment and dietary intake, physical activity, and obesity: A scoping review of reviews

“…Newer technological developments, such as “smart” scales which can be used remotely to send participant body weight directly to research servers, may be particularly helpful for studies attempting to obtain objective measures of body weight 121 . Emerging evidence suggests that these scales have reliable concordance with weights measured during in‐person assessment visits 122,123 . Further, to enhance comparison of effects across studies, researchers should note differences in weight and BMI as continuous measurements rather than solely reporting weight status categories.…”

“…121 Emerging evidence suggests that these scales have reliable concordance with weights measured during inperson assessment visits. 122,123 Further, to enhance comparison of effects across studies, researchers should note differences in weight and BMI as continuous measurements rather than solely reporting weight status categories.…”

Impact of an online multicomponent very-low-carbohydrate program in women with polycystic ovary syndrome: a pilot study

“…The results were converted to International System of Units per standard protocols. We used a remote scale for body weight measurements because this has been found to be correlated .99 with in-person, clinic-based measurements ( 24 , 25 ).…”

Sociodemographic Characteristics Associated with Pretreatment Weight Change in a U.S. Military Behavioral Weight Loss Intervention

“…BMI (overweight: 25.0-29.9 kg/m 2 or obese: > 30 kg/m 2 ) was calculated from BV measurements. If clinic weight was missing for followups, BodyTrace™ weights closest (± 30 days) to these time points were used, based on the strong concordance between in-clinic and e-scale weight measurements (Ross & Wing, 2016;Pebley et al, 2019) After this step, missing weights at 4-months (n = 13) and 12months (n = 42) were imputed as baseline weight carried forward as a conservative estimate of these participants' weight loss outcomes and consistent methodology with West and colleagues (West et al, 2011). Participants identified gender (i.e., male, female), age (i.e., <30 years, 30-40 years, >40 years), ethnicity [i.e., (non-Hispanic/Latino, Hispanic/Latino)], and race [i.e., Caucasian, African American, and Other (i.e., race categories that were infrequently reported)] at SV.…”