Variable specification
stunting, anemia
ANEMIA
Adolescents’ anemia status was considered as the outcome variable and was defined according to WHO age- and sex- specific cutoffs (the gold standard for assessing anemia) as individual hemoglobin levels between 11 and 11.9 mg/dl, 8–10.9 g/dl, and lower than 8 g/dl as mild, moderate and severe respectively, for children 12–14 years and non-pregnant females over 15 years. For children 10–11 years old, mild anemia was defined as hemoglobin concentration between 11 and 11.4 g/dl and for males over 15, hemoglobin concentrations between 11.0 and 12.9 were considered mild anemia [Independent variables considered as potential factors associated with anemia in this study were identified by reviewing previous literature. Household possessions and assets were combined into a wealth status indicator using principal components analysis and then categorized into wealth quintiles.Dietary data were collected through food frequency questionnaires in which the adolescents identified how many times in the last 30 days they had consumed each of a list of foods commonly found in Tanzania. We re-coded the food frequency data into number of times consumed per week, using the mid-point of the response categories (i.e., zero for “never or 1–3 times in the last month”, 3 for “2–4 times per week”, 5.5 for “5–6 times per week” and 7 for “once per day” or anything higher). For each food group of the Household Diet Diversity Score (HDDS) [Variables for stunting (low height-for-age) and body mass index (BMI) category were coded by calculating anthropometric z-scores for height-for-age and BMI-for-age, using the 2007 WHO growth reference stata macro (who2007.ado) [