Physical Activity Review (Jun 2014)
Body composition of undergraduates – comparison of fourdifferent measurement methods
Abstract
The objective of this study was to determine body composition of university students usingfour different methods and to find out the extent of agreement between these methods regarding themeasurement of body fat percentage in body composition. The study group consisted of 52 students ofthe P.J. Šafárik University in Košice (29 males and 23 females) whose average age was 22.4 ± 1.9. Thestudy group was formed by convenience sampling. Basic somatometric parameters (body height andweight) were determined and body mass index (BMI) was calculated. The body fat percentage wasdetermined by indirect methods, that is by measuring skinfold thickness at 10 locations on the bodyusing calliper Best II.K501 and by bioimpendance method using devices Bodystat 1500, Omron BF511(tetra-polar electrode configuration) and Omron BF300 (bi-polar electrode configuration). Profileanalysis based on one-sample Hotelling’s test with chi-squared approximation was used for assessingagreement among given four methods of body fat measurements. Statistical analysis of differencesamong methods was supplemented by the Bland-Altman graphical method with the Wilcoxon pairedtest. The whole statistical analysis was performed using Excel and software R. Hotteling’s Test (p <2.2e-16) rejected the hypothesis of agreement between the methods. The greatest influence on thisrejection was attributed to the Omron BF511 method. In addition, the results of Wilcoxon’s matchedpairs test confirmed the difference of the Omron BF511 method from the other three measurementmethods. Bland-Altman graphical analysis showed that the Omron BF511 provided clearly highervalues in comparison to the three remaining measurement methods of body fat percentage. The skinfoldmeasurement, the Omron BF300 and the Bodystat 1500 were almost identical. For all the indirectmethods it is necessary to validate the accuracy of their measurements using reference methods for thecurrent local population. The skinfold thickness measurement method by Pařízková meets thisrequirement. Based on our results, the values determined by the devices Omron BF300 and Bodystat1500 can also be considered applicable. The Omron BF511 does not provide results that could beconsidered sufficiently accurate for the purposes of research. In order to verify this conclusion the largergroup of probands (n = 100 - 300) and a method of repeated measurements would be necessary.
