Objective The purpose of this study was to compare the correlations of air displacement plethysmography (ADP, BOD-POD) with the bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA, including TANITA and OMRON methods) and skinfold thickness (ST). Methods Six hundred and ninety-seven healthy Shanghai adults (471 male and 226 female), aged 20-to 59 year, were enrolled in this study. Measurement of body composition derived from ADP was used as the reference method. The validity of all of the other methods was assessed by comparison against the reference by one-way anova and bivariate correlations. Results Estimation of body fat percentage by BIA were highly correlated with that by ADP in both male and female subjects (r=0.702 to 0.760, P