Patricia Kitsao-Wekulo, Penny Holding, H. Gerry Taylor, Amina Abubakar, Jane Kvalsvig, Kevin Connolly
Abstract
Adequate nutrition is fundamental to the development of a child's full potential. However, the extent to which malnutrition affects developmental and cognitive outcomes in the midst of co-occurring risk factors remains largely understudied. We sought to establish if the effects of nutritional status varied according to diverse background characteristics as well as to compare the relative strength of the effects of poor nutritional status on language skills, motor abilities, and cognitive functioning at school age. This cross-sectional study was conducted among school-age boys and girls resident in Kilifi District in Kenya. We hypothesized that the effects of area of residence, school attendance, household wealth, age and gender on child outcomes are experienced directly and indirectly through child nutritional status. The use of structural equation modeling (SEM) allowed the disaggregation of the total effect of the explanatory variables into direct effects (effects that go directly from one variable to another) and indirect effects. Each of the models tested for the four child outcomes had a good fit. However, the effects on verbal memory apart from being weaker than for the other outcomes, were not mediated through nutritional status. School attendance was the most influential predictor of nutritional status and child outcomes. The estimated models demonstrated the continued importance of child nutritional status at school-age.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 4. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 04 December 2013.
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#7,531,909
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#78,977
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Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
#419
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Altmetric has tracked 24,246,771 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 68th percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 7,441 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 14.8. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 57% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 860 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 50% of its contemporaries.
