A Cross-sectional Study on Exploring Body Mass Index (BMI) as a Cause of Furniture Mismatch among Secondary School Students

Various factors are cause of Mismatch between furniture and body dimension. This study aim to establish Body Mass Index as one of its significance cause. This is a cross-sectional study with a sample size of 640 secondary students from private and public schools in Lagos State, Nigeria. Multistage Sampling Technique was employed with Simple Random Sampling adopted for every stage. Furniture measurement were taken using appropriate equipment and all anthropometry measurement were taken following the recommendation of International Society for the Advancement of Kinanthropometry (ISAK) using the appropriate equipment as well. The data was analysed for descriptive statistics, the frequency statistics, match and mismatch analysis, and Chi Square Test Analysis with statistical significance α set at <0.05.

The descriptive statistics highlighted the mean, median (in a case), standard deviation, minimum and maximum of anthropometry of the students as well the BMI descriptive statistics according to age groups, sex and schools. The results show that BMI of more than half of the students’ participants are normal, however, there are underweight (severe malnutrition and moderate malnutrition), overweight and obese within students. Also, the results show mismatches in almost all measurements compared with furniture dimension and outright mismatch in a case. Furthermore, there is an association between most of the BMI, match and mismatches between body measurement and furniture dimension investigated.

Body Mass Index have been established among many as a cause of mismatch between body measurement and furniture dimension. Further research can be carried out to establish other cause of mismatches.