Anthropometry of the southern Thai population
Introduction
The economic growth and technological improvements have lead to greater demand and development of machines and devices used in industrial settings. With these dramatic changes there has also been greater interaction between man and machines. Anthropometric data are one of essential factors in designing machines and devices (Mebarki and Davies, 1990). Incorporating such information would yield more effective designs, ones that are more user friendly, safer, and enable higher performance and productivity. The lack of properly designed machines and equipment may lead to lower work performance and higher incidence of work-related injuries (Botha and Bridger, 1998).
Thailand is divided into four main regions: North, Northeast, Central, and South. Due to the limitation of time and resources, only few studies on Thai anthropometry on selected regions have been conducted. In 1983, Satavuthi (1983) reported a survey of 37 body dimensions of 855 females and 1260 males, with average ages of 23.70 years and 29.20 years, respectively. The subjects who participated in Satavuthi's study were from central Thailand and worked in various types of industries: high physical demand task, medium physical demand task, and light physical demand task. The second study was reported in 1991 by Intaranont et al. (1991). A total of 500 industrial and agriculture workers (250 males and 250 females; ages 17–55 years) from North Eastern of Thailand participated in this study. A newer study of Thai anthropometry by Yodpijit et al. (2004) reported the anthropometric data of 200 male and 200 female university students from central Thailand (i.e. Bangkok and its vicinities). The poor documentation of Thai anthropometry may prevent the proper consideration of Thai users in the design stage.
Southern Thailand contains 13.4% of Thailand's population (National Statistical Office, 2000), and it is a major area of several industries. However, no study has been conducted to report the anthropometric data of the people in this specific region, neither to report the effects of Thai geographical factors on the anthropometric data. Therefore, a need exists to establish the anthropometric characteristics of this region.
Different from other regions, the south of Thailand is a long narrow peninsula. The mountain barriers and thick tropical forest caused the separation of this region into the upper-south and lower-south regions. Therefore, the word southern Thailand would generally refer to both upper-south and lower-south areas, otherwise specified. There are seven provinces in the lower-south region and contains about 53% of the southern population. The remaining southern population resides in the other seven provinces of the upper-south (National Statistical Office, 2000).
The objective of this study was to examine the anthropometric characteristics of southern Thai adults by using the physical measurements of university students. The secondary objective was to examine whether anthropometry of southern Thai population could be used to represent both populations from both upper-south and lower-south regions. The information obtained from this study could be incorporated with the recent work of Yodpijit et al. (2004) to further complete the Thai anthropometric database. This database could provide information for effective engineering designs, and information for in depth research for the areas of engineering or other related disciplines.
Section snippets
Method
This study is the combination of two independent surveys. The first survey, the anthropometry of lower-southern Thai adults, was funded by the Faculty of Engineering, Prince of Songkla University, Songkhla, Thailand (February 2004). This survey adopted the measurements used by Intaranont et al. (1991) such that the comparison between the lower-south data and Intaranont et al.'s data could be performed. The second survey, the anthropometry of southern Thai adults, is funded by the Faculty of
The anthropometric data for the southern Thai adults
Descriptive statistics given mean, standard deviation, and percentile values of each population group are presented in Table 1, Table 2, Table 3, Table 4.
Comparison of anthropometric data for southern Thai adults and lower-southern Thai adults
The t-test was performed to determine the differences between mean values of the southern Thai data and the lower-southern Thai data. As the body dimensions from the two data sets did not fully correspond, only 18 matching dimensions were selected for comparison. The results (Table 5(a)) indicated that southern male adults have greater height,
Discussion and conclusions
Anthropometric data of male and female students, aged 18–25 years, from southern and lower-southern Thailand were collected and summarized. The comparison between the populations from these two regions indicated that there were few dimensions that are significantly different. Male adults from southern region are significantly taller than the male adults from lower-southern region. However, there were no differences in body weight between these two male populations. In addition, there were no
Acknowledgments
The research was funded by the Faculty of Engineering, Prince of Songkla University, Songkhla, Thailand, and the Faculty of Engineering, King Mongkut's Institute of Technology North Bangkok, Bangkok, Thailand.
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