Study on anthropometric measurements of school-aged boys in Pärnu city

Abstract

In 2018, a study on boys’ anthropometry was conducted in Pärnu Koidula Gymnasium (referred to as PKG) as a school research project. 214 highschool boys, aged 17–19 years, participated in the study. The young men of PKG have thicker but shorter legs than the boys measured by Juhan Aul 1932–1940. Compared to the norms developed in 2017 by Kaarma et al. [6], the 17-year-old boys of PKG are on average 3 cm taller and 5.1 kg heavier, the 18-year-old boys do not differ so much from the standards. The 17-yearolds’ trunk index mean value has a statistically significantly lower value compared to the 18-year-olds (mean difference –0.897, p=0.031). The somatotypes classification analysis showed that the number of 17-year-old boys in the LARGE class is three times higher compared to the 2017 norms. The number of 18-year-olds in pycnomorfs 3 (P3) class is twice as much as the number of boys reported in the norms. Some anthropometrical indexes are more related to the SD classifications than others are. Compared to earlier measurements, the current results reported similar acceleration as other researchers had.