| Author: | Chau, Yuen-lam Diana |
| Title: | Shoe usage and foot morphology in Chinese children aged 5 to 6 |
| Degree: | M.Sc. |
| Year: | 2010 |
| Subject: | Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations Children -- China -- Hong Kong. Footwear -- Health aspects |
| Department: | Department of Health Technology and Informatics |
| Pages: | ix, 75 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm. |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | There were significant changes in footprint parameters which reflect foot arch configuration from 3 to 5 years of age. This indicated that the 3rd to 5th years of life are the key moment for significant foot arch development. In Hong Kong, children of the said age range attend kindergartens. Every school has her own policy in uniform requirement and school time. Shoe types and wearing time vary in children of different schools. The arrangement during the critical life period may affect foot arch development of the children. This study aimed to find out whether there was any relationship among shoe types, school time and prevalence of flat feet in children at 5 to 6 years of age which was after the critical period. Three hundred and seven children, aged 5 to 6 years, from 3 kindergartens were invited to participate in the study. Each subject should have attended the same kindergarten for the last 2 years and did not have foot pain, foot orthotic intervention and any medical disorder. In this study, 228 (130 male and 98 female) out of 307 subjects from 3 local kindergartens fulfilled all the selection criteria. While more than half of the subjects attended morning (AM) class (120 subjects), 50 subjects attended afternoon (PM) class, and 58 subjects attended whole day (WD) class. Two schools required their students to wear uniform shoes and sports shoes on alternate days. The third school allowed the students to wear sports shoes only. Each subject was asked to perform single leg stance on a foot imprinter for the collection of static full body-weight footprint. Footprints of both feet were taken by one examiner. On the footprints, the footprint angles were measured. The resting stance calcaneal angle (RSCA) was also measured to serve as an indicator to reflect the degree of flexible flat feet. The higher foot arch morphology yields a bigger footprint angle and a smaller RSCA. Data were divided into groups according to school time and shoe types. The result of 2-way ANOVA test showed that the effect of school time was significant for both right (P = 0.031) and left (P = 0.027) feet. The post-test results also showed that the footprint angles of the WD group were significantly lower (P < 0.05) than the PM group. There was also a tendency of increasing footprint angle across the data of WD class, AM class and PM class. The effect between wearing sports shoes daily and wearing sports shoes and uniform shoes on alternate days was not statistically significant.The effect of gender and overweight were also found and agreed with the other previous studies. Whole day class students aged 5-6 are subjected to higher prevalence of flat foot. This result suggested that poorer foot arch development happened in the WD group of which the children had longer shoe-wearing duration. This was in line with the findings of other previous researches, where subjects who wore shoes for a longer time would had flatter feet. For the increasing hierarchy of footprint angles among the three school time groups, further investigation should be done to give stronger support on the discrepancy between the AM group and PM group and investigate the possible causes. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
Files in This Item:
| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b23550028.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 2.77 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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