Anthropometric Dimensions and Classroom Furniture Measurements Among Pre-school Students in Kerman, South East of Iran

Introduction: With the alternation of the educational system from a three-stage into a two-stage system in Iranian schools since several years ago, five-year-old children entered from kindergartens to primary schools. This study was conducted to investigate the harmonization of classroom furniture with anthropometric dimensions in preschool students. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 366 male and female preschool students were selected by cluster sampling method in Kerman, Iran. Some of the anthropometric dimensions such as shoulder, elbow, and popliteal height, popliteal buttock length, and buttock breadth were measured. mean, maximum, minimum, standard division, and 5th, 50th, and 95th percentiles were calculated for both the sexes and were compared with five dimensions of the existing seats. Next, the dimensions of the standard seats were determined according to the anthropometric dimension’s students. Data were analyzed using SPSS 21 . Results: Results of this research indicated that there is no consistency between the seats and pre-school student s anthropometric dimensions in Kerman city. Seat height was matched with popliteal height in 28.7% and less than 1% of boy and girl student s anthropometric dimensions respectively. Backrest height and seat depth matched with shoulder height and popliteal- buttock length separately in fewer than 10% and armrest height was too smaller than elbow height and seat width was too larger than buttock breadth in both sexes. Conclusions: Due to adding a new grade to primary school, it seems that no work has been done for improving the furniture. Therefore, in this article, we presented the dimensions of an appropriate seat. This may help not only save production costs in the industry but also increase the matching between students anthropometric and seat dimensions.