Statural growth of children aged 11 and 12 years

Abstract

The objective of this study was to analyze growth in the stature of children. The sample was made up of children aged 11 and 12 years, 80 of whom were male and 119 female, from the city of Rolim de Moura, RO, Brazil. Stature was measured according to recommendations published by ALVAREZ & PAVAN (1999). Statistic analyses consisted of means and their standard deviations for stature and body mass at each age, by sex and Student’s t test for independent samples to compare sexes at each age and between ages within sexes, using SPSS Studentware. It was verifi ed that children’s stature incremented significantly (p £ 0.05) as age increased, while girls were signifi cantly (p £ 0.05) taller than boys. According to Santo André’s Growth Study, most of the boys (92.5%) and girls (86.3%) exhibited normal growth in stature. There was also evidence demonstrating that these children from Rolim de Moura, RO, Brazil, exhibited approximately the same stature as their counterparts from developed countries, such as Canada, Spain and the USA, and from several other Brazilian cities. Finally, these children were shown to have greater stature than the adolescents measured by the ENDEF (1975) report on the Brazilian North Geographical Region.