ABSTRACT
Objective To evaluate the reliability of children anthropometric indicators measured by medical students in clini-cal practice .Methods The convenient sampling was adopted to collect the data of the head circumference (HC) ,recumbent length (RL) and crown-rump length (CRL) of infants and young children measured by the students in clinical practice from entering-de-partment training to exiting-department .The re-measured data by clinical teachers were simultaneously collected .The measurement difference were compared between the students and clinical teachers .The measurements reliability was described by using the indi-cators such as the mean absolute differences (MAD) ,percentages of difference within a critical value (PDCV) and so on .Results MAD of HC ,RL and CRL at entering-department were 0 .46 ,0 .55 ,0 .81 cm respectively ,which at exiting-department were 0 .30 , 0 .43 ,0 .51 cm respectively ,the difference were statistically significant (P<0 .05) .PDCV of HC ,RL and CRL belonging to good quality standard at entering-department were 41 .5% ,58 .0% and 36 .0% respectively ,which at exiting-department were increased to 53 .5% ,70 .0% and 59 .0% respectively .PDCV of HC ,RL and CRL belonging to error data were 19 .0% ,10 .0% and 13 .0% re-spectively .Conclusion RL measured by medical students in clinical practice has good quality ,while the bigger errors exist in the measurement values of HC and CRL .