This relationship exists even after controlling for obesity and waist girth.?

Question

Please tell me the meaning of this sentence, especially the context meaning of the word "controlling "."This relationship exists even after controlling for obesity and waist girth."

Answer 1

In this case "controlling" means that the researcher did statistics that took out the effects of obesity and waist girth. That is, the result reported for this study was not affected by obesity and waist girth.

"Control", in this context, means that experimental procedures were done to eliminate the effect of that thing.