Date of Submission

6-28-1963

Date of Award

6-28-1964

Institute Name (Publisher)

Indian Statistical Institute

Document Type

Doctoral Thesis

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Subject Name

Quantitative Economics

Department

Research and Training School (RTS)

Supervisor

Mahalanobis, Prasanta Chandra (RTS-Kolkata; ISI)

Abstract (Summary of the Work)

This is the first investigation on a large-sc le (1,47,066 measurements) of human stature in India based on deta from all pers of the country. Work done hitherto has been on much smaller serics which can in no way be considered representative of the country as a whole. In the present study certain inte- resting ond inportant results have been obtained which we shall now summarise. lany of the comparisons between meaningful groups involve smell differences which would require falrly large samples to establish with statistical signific- ance. This consideration will apply not only to stature but to other hody mea surements also. Progress in anthropom try will in future perha ps depend rore on obtaining large enough samples than on refinement of statistical tools. The chief merit of the present study is that it is bosed on a large sample.Our results refer to the stratum of society from which volunteers come forward to join the arny. How far this stratum differs from the general population in respect of stature we are not in a position to say as informati . about the general population does not exist at present. It is heped that the present work will help to create interest for a random sample survey on an adequate scale to estime te stature and other physical characteristics of the population.The overall a verage stature of the entire series is 6569 and the standard deviation is 2".17 The sample includes both those who were accepted by the army as well as those who w re rejected. An extensive investigation has shown that there is no meterial difference between the distribut ons of stature of these two groups though even the small differences that exist are n some cases statistically significant The difference in mean values of stature is O06 between accepted and re jected candidates for recruitment.The normality of the distribution of ststure in different communities in different age groups of esch c ommunity has been investigated in detail. On theoretical considerations and on pest experience of material from different parts of the world stature as well as other anthropometric measurements may be expected to follow the normal distribution. In our data there are many signif- icant deportures from normality, though the ma gnitude of the differences are genera ly small. As the analysis of varience tests which we have cerried out are not very sensitive to moderate changes fr om normality we may not be making any wrong conclusions in using normal theory. To throw light on the normality of the distribation of stature we have mede use of siaeable series of measure- nents from several past surveys from India and Englend. A new method known as Tractile graphical analysis which was used to study normality of distribution has given interesting results.The effect of partiel curtailment of frequencies below the standards of stature prescribed by the aray for recruitment from different communities has been exa ned. The effect in general is to enhance the apparent average stature and to reduce the apperent standard deviation. Here, also, it has been possible to make súre by trying out in a few cases that the differences between communities and the changes over time we have observed have not been unduly affected by the distortion in frequencies introduced by recruitment standards.The pettern of change in stature with increasing age is found to be similar - to that observed by earlier investigators. Stature increases till age 19 to 23 ar.d then decreases with advance of age.

Comments

ProQuest Collection ID: http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqm&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:28843025

Control Number

ISILib-C11200

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

DOI

http://dspace.isical.ac.in:8080/jspui/handle/10263/2146

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