Using a Multivariate Accommodation Model to Study Anthropometric Differences between Ethnic Groups in Ecuador

Abstract

In this paper we use MAM to study the anthropometric differences of ethnic groups in Ecuador. The objective of this paper is to build anthropometric descriptors for men and women from groups of mestizos and indigenous inhabitants of the highlands of Ecuador and determine whether these descriptors are different for each population. We use ten anthropometric measurements from data obtained from men and women self-identified as mestizos (639) and Indigenous (99) of the Central Sierra region of Ecuador. We carried out a principal components analysis and from these factors we built anthropometric descriptors for each individual population and the combined population. We also evaluate the level of adjustment and then we compared MAM to traditional modeling. The results show that there are differences in body configurations for different populations. For these case study we found that the MAM performs better than traditional modeling, however when we analyzed the percentage of people excluded in each population we found that there are biases in coverage.

Keywords

• Antropometría
• ergonomía
• modelos de acomodación multivariante
• grupos étnicos
• Ecuador