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INTRODUCTION Assessing body composition (BC) in obese individuals is challenging because the assumptions made by many direct BC methods, for example, body densitometry, may be violated in the presence of [...], BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: We evaluated the agreement of air displacement plethysmography (ADP) and bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) with dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) for the assessment of percent fat mass (%FM) in morbidly obese women. SUBJECTS/METHODS: Fifty-seven women aged 19-55 years and with a body mass index (BMI) ranging from 37.3 to 55.2 kg/[m.sup.2] were studied. Values of %FM were obtained directly from ADP and DXA, whereas for BIA we estimated fat-free mass (FFM) from an equation for morbidly obese subjects and calculated %FM as (weight--FFM)/weight. RESULTS: The mean (s.d.) difference between ADP and DXA for the assessment of %FM was -2.4% (3.3%) with limits of agreement (LOA) from -8.8% to 4.1%. The mean (s.d.) difference between BIA and DXA for the assessment of %FM was 1.7% (3.3%) with LOA from -4.9% to 8.2%. CONCLUSION: ADP-DXA and BIA-DXA are not interchangeable methods for the assessment of body composition in morbidly obese women. European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2013) 67, 1129-1132; doi: 10.1038/ejcn.2013.159; published online 11 September 2013 Keywords: obesity; body composition; dual energy X-ray absorptiometry; air displacement plethysmography; bioelectrical impedance analysis