Dominant Body Somatotype and its Influence on the Quadriceps and Tibiofemoral Angles of Male and Female Young Adults in South Eastern Nigeria

Abstract

Background: Body somatotype reflects an overall outlook of the body and conveys a meaning of the totality of morphological features of the human body.

Objectives: The main purpose of this study was to determine the influence of dominant body somatotype on Quadriceps (Q) and tibiofemoral (TFA) angle of male and female young adults in Southeast Nigeria.

Method: A total of 294 (147 males and 147 females) participants were involved in this study. The research design used was a cross sectional survey and consecutive sampling technique was used to recruit participants. The Heath-Carter Anthropometric Body Somatotyping method was used to measure the body somatotype of each of the participants. A universal plastic goniometer was also used to measure the tibiofemoral and quadriceps angles. Data was analysed with SPSS version 20 and summarized using mean, standard deviation, frequency and percentages. Further analyses were done using two-way ANOVA, two-way MANOVA, Tukey’s HSD Post Hoc test and Pearson Correlation with alpha level set at 0.05.

Result: The result revealed no significant difference (p=0.19 Wilkis lambda ? =0.961, partial eta squared =0.02) for the two-way MANOVA when explored for an interaction effect between sex difference and dominant body somatotype. There were significant influences using two-way ANOVA when explored for the separate impact of sex differences and dominant body somatotypes on the TFA and Q-angle except for the left tibiofemoral. TFA (Lt=0.16 & Rt=0.01) and Q-angle (Lt=0.02 & Rt=0.00). This study also showed that there was a significant positive correlation between right Q-angle and TFA (p<0.001) and left Q-angle and TFA (p<0.001) of endomorphic male and female. The most prevalent dominant body somatotype of all the participants was mesomorphy.

Conclusion: This study established the mean quadriceps and tibiofemoral angles of endomorphic, mesomorphic and ectomorphic male and female young adults in south-east Nigeria. Body somatotype was found to influence the quadriceps and tibiofemoral angles.