Ethnic differences in folic acid supplement use in a population-based cohort of pregnant women in Norway

Table 1 Background characteristics of the participants by ethnicity, means (sd) or numbers (%)^a

	Europe n = 379 (46.7%)		South Asia n = 200 (24.7%)		Middle East n = 126 (15.5%)		Africa n = 62 (7.6%)		East Asia n = 44 (5.4%)
	n	Mean (sd) /%	n	Mean (sd) /%	n	Mean (sd) /%	n	Mean (sd) /%	n	Mean (sd) /%
Age (years)	379	30.2 (4.5)	200	28.2 (4.6)	126	29.0 (5.5)	62	27.7 (5.2)	44	30.8 (4.9)
Born in Norway, n (%)	299	78.9	41	20.5	7	5.6	1	1.6	1	2.3
Recent immigrants^b, n (%)	8	12.3	17	10.7	14	12.0	14	23.0	9	20.9
Norwegian language skills, n (%)
Poor or quite poor	8	2.1	34	17.0	29	23.2	16	25.8	11	25.0
Average or quite good	24	6.3	80	40.0	58	46.4	31	50.0	19	43.2
Good	346	91.5	86	43.0	38	30.4	15	24.2	14	31.8
Educational level, n (%)
High school or less	133	35.4	136	68.3	101	81.5	54	87.1	27	61.4
College or university	243	64.6	63	31.7	23	18.5	8	12.9	17	38.6
Parity ≥1, n (%)	175	46.2	116	58.0	82	65.1	35	56.5	26	59.1
Planned pregnancy, n (%)	245	69.2	125	65.4	73	63.5	32	60.4	18	46.2
Weeks’ gestation at the inclusion visit	379	14.3 (2.4)	200	15.6 (3.9)	126	15.0 (3.3)	62	17.3 (4.9)	44	16.2 (3.9)

^aA total of 59 women had a missing value for planned pregnancy and the numbers varied by ethnicity as follows: Europeans 25 (6.6% of all Europeans), South Asian 9 (4.5%), Middle Eastern 11 (8.7%), East Asian 5 (11.4%) and African 9 (14.5%). The total numbers of missing values for the other variables were: recent immigrants (n = 17 among women not born in Norway), educational level (n = 6), Norwegian skills (n = 2) and other variables (n = 0)
^b<2 years’ residence in Norway among women who were not born in Norway

ISSN: 1471-2393