Year: 1962
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: In sociomedical studies, and more especially now that infectious diseases have declined, greater atten- tion is being directed to the personal qualities and characteristics that are associated with greater dis- position to illness.Physique is one of these qualities and it has the advantage of being measurable.Anthropometry can provide in fact a useful lever into the complex reasons why particular individuals choose particular occupations; and also why parti- cular consequences may follow the adoption of, say, an active or sedentary occupation.If muscularity contributes to self-selection for manual and active occupations, and if sedentary occupations predispose to obesity, it might be thought appropriate to mea- sure such physical qualities directly.These measures need not replace traditional measures of body size employing height and weight, but by laying greater emphasis on body shape and content they may be found to correlate more closely with physiological function and behaviour.Social class and other group discrepancies in height and weight, so often attributed to environmental influence, do not necessarily result from such factors alone (Parnell, 1954), and in so far as constitutional variation is genetically determined the data to be presented here should add something of value to both our knowledge and understanding. SAMPLEThe men who compose the sample (1,488) were patients admitted to the four mental hospitals in the southern part of the Oxford region during the years 1955 to 1959.It did not prove practical to measure every single male patient, but the method adopted of visiting each hospital weekly and measuring men admitted since the previous week, made the sample as nearly representative of all admissions as possible.Very short-stay patients admitted after one visit and discharged before the next week's visit were missed; so too were a very small number who refused to be seen.In addition to the physical measurements, all of which were taken by one of the authors (R.W.P.), Dr. Ian Skottowe, consultant psychiatrist, examined all the subjects, using a standard record form of mental examination specially designed for this pur- pose.The diagnoses referred to in the text are there- fore those made by a single observer. MEASUREMENTSThe measurements taken include the following:(i) Skinfold thickness, mainly subcutaneous fat, over the back of the arm, over the scapular, and in the supra-iliac region.(ii) Measurements of muscularity:(a) Transverse width of bones, namely the bicondylar widths of humerus and femur.(b) Limb girth over the biceps and calf muscles. (iii) Ponderal index (height divided by the cube root of weight), to provide a measure of the linearity of body build.From these three groups of measurements a threenumeral index was derived on the lines of the somatotype index of Sheldon, Stevens, and Tucker (1940), although Sheldon's estimates were of course based on photoscopic assessment.The index will be referred to here as "the phenotype", because of the important differences in the method of deriving it by means of physical anthropometry, and also because it seems unnecessary to insist, at least in the present 130 copyright.
Authors: R. W. Parnell, H. C. A. Somerset
Institution: Medical Research Council
Language: English
Subfield: Physiology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2030640615