A Study on High School Girls' Body Development and Body Fat

The purpose of this study is to compare the relationship between physical characteristics and % body fat, using the data from senior students at a girl's high school in 1993 (three years ago) and in 1996. The subjects of this study were high school girls in Seoul and were composed of 274 persons in 1993 and 284 in 1996. Their heights, weights and % body fat were measured. The results are as follows : Analyses of t-test revealed that there was a significant difference in height between two groups (p<.001), the mean value of height in 1996 being taller (2.26cm) than that in 1993. However, that of weight between two groups were almost identical. Although the mean value of two groups were similar, examination of the data showed that the maximum value of weight was quite different between the two groups (maximum value in 1993 being 92kg, as compared to 75.5kg in 1996). Also, the comparison of % body fat showed that the mean value in 1996 was larger than that in 1993 (23.66 vs. 22.59, p<.001). In summary, the results of this study suggest that we are not necessarily faced with the state to worry about side-effect by excessive fat accumulation as a result of high school girls' high calory intake. These results may be obtained by several kind of social causes but we must consider the student's stress of S.A.T, increase of class at school, and increasing energy consumption (decrease of S.D).