Agreement in the Army's Circumference Measurements and Dual-Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry

The United States military has two primary outcomes for fitness: combat readiness and physical appearance. In response to the Army Weight Control Program, height-weight tables were put forth to evaluate soldiers’ body fat percentages and screen for overweight individuals. However, few studies have examined the agreement in body composition estimates between the Army’s circumference measurements and dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA). The purpose of this study was to quantify the agreement in body fat percentage estimates between the Army’s circumference measurements and dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry in male Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (R.O.T.C.) cadets. Male R.O.T.C. cadets (<em>N </em>= 23) between the ages of 18-24 from Central Washington University’s R.O.T.C. program were used as participants. Participants underwent taping according to Army protocol, and a DXA test to examine percentage body fat. Utilizing SPSS, a modified Bland-Altman (BA) plot was used to analyze the quality of agreement for continuous variables. There was a significant negative correlation between the difference in percentage body fat (taping – DXA) and the DXA scores (r = -0.722, <em>p</em> < 0.001), indicating poor agreement between the taping field test and the DXA laboratory criterion. The results depict little methodological agreement in percentage body fat between taping and the DXA. In contrast, when analyzing the categorical variables, overweight and over-fat, there is a moderate level of agreement between the height-weight tables and DXA methods as demonstrated by the 78.3% percent of agreement.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science (MS)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Exercise Science

Year dc:date.available

2015

Author dc:creator

• Mitchell, Katherine

Contributors dc:contributor

• Kelly Pritchett
• Robert Pritchett
• David L. Gee

• taping
• military
• ROTC
• Body Regions
• Sports Sciences

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/etd/146

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.cwu.edu:etd-1126