Tijana Purenovic¹

¹Fakultet sporta i fizičkog vaspitanja, Univerziteta u Nišu

BODY MASS INDEX AND HEAD DIAMETERS OF FIFTH GRADE PRIMARY SCHOOLCHILDREN IN NIS

INDEKS TELESNE MASE I DIJAMETRI GLAVE UČENIKA V RAZREDA OSNOVNIH ŠKOLA U NIŠU

Sport Mont 2007, V(12-13-14), 703-714

Abstract

Body mass index, as proposed by World Health Organisation, is a measure which is widely used, particulary in the assessment of obesity, but it is also used in evaluation of body development. The purpose of the present study is to determing whether there are differences in head diameters between underweight, normalweight and overweight fi fth grade primary schoolchildren in Nis. The sample of examinees consisted of 150 pupils (76 underweight, 61 normalweight and 13 overweight) 10 to 11 years of age. The anthropometric status was estimated according to set of 11 variables – one variable for the evaluation of degree of obesity (body mass index) and 10 head dimensions variables (head circumference, neck circumference, head width, morphological face height, face width, nose length, nose width, mandibula width, ear length and mouth width). The anthropometric measurements were accomplished by author himself according to International Biological Programme, and used measurement tools were anthropometer, decimal scale, tape-measure and cephalometer. The differences between examinees were established according to t-test on univariate level, and according to canonical discriminative analysis on multivariate level. The results of the research have shown that there are statistically signifi cant differences between fi fth grade underweight, normalweight and overweight pupils.

Keywords

thinness, obesity, head dimensions, differences

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