Validity of anthropometric procedures to estimate body density and body fat percent in military men

Abstract

The objective of this study was to verify the validity of the Katch e McArdle’s equation (1973), which uses the circumferences of the arm, forearm and abdominal to estimate the body density and the procedure of Cohen (1986) which uses the circumferences of the neck and abdominal to estimate the body fat percent (%F) in military men. Therefore data from 50 military men, with mean age of 20.26 ± 2.04 years serving in Santa Maria, RS, was collected. The circumferences were measured according with Katch e McArdle (1973) and Cohen (1986) procedures. The body density measured (Dm) obtained under water weighting was used as criteria and its mean value was 1.0706 ± 0.0100 g/ml. The residual lung volume was estimated using the Goldman’s e Becklake’s equation (1959). The %F was obtained with the Siri’s equation (1961) and its mean value was 12.70 ± 4.71%. The validation criterion suggested by Lohman (1992) was followed. The analysis of the results indicated that the procedure developed by Cohen (1986) has concurrent validity to estimate %F in military men or in other samples with similar characteristics with standard error of estimate of 3.45%.