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Outcomes and risk factors

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Are all the outcomes and risk factors measured clearly defined according to national or international standards? If not, the reader may not have a clear idea of what was measured. This would pose a difficulty, for example, in a nutrition survey of young children. Mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC) produces a very different prevalence of acute malnutrition from that derived from weight-for-height.

How was eligibility determined? One example of problems with determining which children are eligible for the survey is determining the age of each child. In many emergency-affected populations in which surveys are done, parents do not know the age of their children, and many children are stunted (too short for their age). If survey teams use height as a proxy for age (for example, all children less than 110 cm are considered under 5 years of age), many short children older than 5 years of age may be included in the survey.