Estimated anthropometric measurements of Turkish adults and effects of age and geographical regions

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the anthropometric characteristics of the Turkish population by geographical region, age and gender. A survey of 4205 samples consisting of 2263 male and 1942 female civilian subjects was done in the year of 2007. It contains data from all seven geographical regions of Turkey and from all age groups. In the study, height and weight of the subjects were measured by age. Then, these data were used for estimating anthropometric measurements of the Turkish population. The main result of this study is the anthropometric measurements table for Turkey which shows 37 measurements that are commonly used in industry. The anthropometric measurements that are used to make the designs fit human shape and the human/machine or human/environment interface should be updated through time due to changing body types over time (secular trends) due to numerous factors. In this study, we not only update these variables, which are 30 years old, but also investigate the age and region effects on stature and weight of Turkish population. Relevance to industry: During the design phase of a product, incorporating anthropometric information would yield more efficient designs, which are more user friendly, safer and enable higher performance and productivity. So the anthropometric measurements table that is extracted from this study can be used by industry to produce better human oriented products for Turkish population. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.