Sociodemographic factors Gender Boys Girls Location of residence Urban Rural Age in years 13 14 15 Mother's education Less than secondary school Secondary school/college or university or higher Father's education Less than secondary school Secondary school College or university Family size Mean ± SD 1-6 persons 7-8 persons > 8 persons Household STLb Mean ± SD Low (0-6) Medium (7-10) High (11-16) Present household economic situation indexc Worse off (14-20) Medium (7-13) Better off (4-6) 46.7 (437) 53.3 (498) 41.0 (373) 59.0 (537) 41.4 (387) 44.5 (416) 14.1 (132) 72.7 (662) 27.3 (249) 61.4 (557) 16.7 (152) 21.9 (199) 8.1 ± 2.4 27.6 (240) 34.7 (301) 37.7 (327) 9.2 ± 2.9 18.3 (156) 48.9 (418) 32.8 (280) 17.9 (159) 56.5 (503) 25.6 (228) 45.5 (458) 54.5 (549) 67.8 (663) 32.2 (315) 32.9 (331) 48.0 (484) 19.1 (192) 77.2 (729) 22.8 (215) 66.3 (625) 15.3 (144) 18.4 (173) 8.9 ± 2.5 12.5 (118) 37.6 (355) 49.9 (472) 8.0 ± 2.8 29.5 (292) 52.4 (518) 18.1 (179) 30.7 (283) 54.1 (498) 15.2 (140) BMC Public Health 2009, 9:485 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/9/485 Table 1: Sociodemographic characteristics of the study sample Ramallah governorate n = 935 % (n) Hebron governorate n = 1007 % (n) SD: Standard deviation aP for the comparison between governorates using χ2 tests for categorical variables and t-tests for means. bHousehold standard of living index (STL) was based on the possession of 16 household amenities; each item given a value of 1. cPresent household economic situation index was formulated based on 4 questions: - "Do you have enough money to cover family needs now?" "At the present time, do you have any debts?" At the present time, to what extent do you have to postpone paying bills?" and "During the past school year, did you have to borrow money to cover family needs?" Stunting The prevalence of stunting was 7.3% in Ramallah and 6.5% in Hebron governorates. In both governorates, the prevalence of stunting was higher among boys than girls and this difference was more pronounced in Hebron (9.4% for boys versus 4.2% for girls, P < 0.001) (Table 2). Among boys in Ramallah, stunting was significantly higher among those with rural residence, low mother's education, low household STL, lack of food availability, and among those who had not reached puberty. In Hebron, stunting was significantly associated with worse off present household economic situation index (Table 3). among those who had not reached puberty in both gover- norates and among girls with low STL in Hebron (Table 4). Results from the multivariate regression analysis (Table 5) in boys showed that high father's education was nega- tively associated with stunting and that stunting was higher among boys in the 15 years age group. Among girls, stunting was negatively associated with urban resi- dence, with medium STL and it was lower among girls who have reached puberty. No colinearity or significant interactions were detected between variables in the mod- els. Among girls, the proportion being stunted was signifi- cantly higher among those from rural areas of Ramallah, Stunting was positively associated with underweight. Of the stunted adolescents, 20.8% were underweight com- Page 5 of 12 (page number not for citation purposes) Pa 0.919 0.032 0.257 0.322 0.299 0.001 < 0.001 0.002 0.003 < 0.001