Oni, G.A (1986) The effects of maternal age, education, and parity on birthweight in a Nigerian community: the comparison of results from bivariate and multivariate analyses. Journal of Tropical Pediatrics, 32 (6). pp. 295-300.
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Efforts to reduce the incidence of low birth weight in developing countries have centered on identifying the socioeconomic determinants of birth weight in these countries. This paper has tried to call to attention the fact that, although simple statistical analysis may seem convenient and appealing for analyzing birth weight data, it may lead to erroneous results and conclusions. Such approaches may be used only as a preliminary step towards a further examination of the data. A case of bivariate analysis is demonstrated. The paper examines the effects of maternal age, education, and parity on birth weight distribution in a Nigerian community. The application of the bivariate analysis suggested that all the 3 variables had significant effects on birth weight. However, a multivariate analysis of the data suggested that, among the 3 variables, only maternal education has significant independent effects on birth weight and that the significant effect previously observed for maternal age and parity through bivariate analysis is spurious. The results of this analysis suggest that a closer monitoring of illiterate pregnant women may be necessary in order to impove their pregnancy outcome with regard to birth weight. Programs aimed at educating mothers about the importance of good nutrition before and during pregnancy may help produce a desired effect
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