1.Malnutrition and its associated factors among children under 5 years old in Putrajaya: a study protocol
Mohamad Hasnan Ahmad ; Nor Azian Mohd Zaki ; Fatimah Othman ; Azli Baharudin ; Ruhaya Salleh ; Cheong Siew Man ; Adibah Huda Mohd Zainul Arifien ; Nurin Iman Ahmad Kamal ; Noor Ani Ahmad ; Hazizi Abu Saad ; Poh Bee Koon ; Mohd Azahadi Omar ; Tahir Aris
Malaysian Journal of Nutrition 2021;27(No.1):141-151
		                        		
		                        			
		                        			Introduction: Prevalence of malnourished children in Putrajaya was unexpectedly 
high in 2016. This paper describes the study protocol for a case-control study 
conducted to identify the associated factors of malnutrition among children under 
5 years old in Putrajaya. Methods: This study involved two phases. Phase I 
was ‘screening’ where all children aged 6-59 months in 118 preschools and four 
government health clinics were measured for their weight and height. The World 
Health Organization Anthro software was used to determine the nutritional status 
of these children. Phase II was the ‘interview’ where children from screening were 
sampled into four pairs of case and control. The optimum sample size for the case 
of stunted, wasted, underweight, and overweight were 380, 335, 318, and 308, 
respectively. The same number of controls were recruited. Parents/caregivers of 
selected children were approached to obtain data on parental factors, children factors, 
food intake factors, and environmental factors that contributed to malnutrition. 
Data analysis was performed by multiple logistic regression in SPSS version 26. 
Results: Screening phase successfully measured 8,261 (50.1%) children from an 
estimated 16,500 children under 5 years old in Putrajaya. The number of children 
who were stunted, wasted, underweight, and overweight were 2,105 (25.5%), 512 
(6.2%), 1,516 (18.4%), and 248 (3.0%), respectively. As overweight was undersampled, the number of controls for overweight was doubled to increase the power 
of the study. Parents/caregivers of selected cases and controls were interviewed in 
their household or any other venues at their convenience. Conclusion: This protocol 
promises beneficial outputs to stakeholders and policy makers that can be used for 
combating malnutrition in children. 
		                        		
		                        		
		                        		
		                        	
            

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