Relationships between Fat and Appearance Ratings of U.S. Soldiers

摘要

Military Service requirements to maintain physical appearance drive, in part, theService standards for maximum weight for height and/or body composition. This report considers two issues: (1) how strongly are ratings of 'military appearance' and fatness associated, and (2) can reliable, valid assessments be made visually in a military population which includes both genders and contains members of varying race and age. A panel of 11 U.S. Army Headquarters staff personnel made visual ratings of 1075 male and 251 female U.S. Army personnel from photographs of the subjects both in uniform and in swimsuit. Subjects were rated for 'appearance' in both uniform and swimsuit using a 5-point scale, and for 'fatness' in swimsuit using a 7-point scale developed by Blanchard and co-workers. Inter-rater reliabilities of the scales were 0.86, 0.90, and 0.92 for appearance in uniform, appearance in swimsuit, and fatness in swimsuit, respectively. Correlations between ratings and percent fat from hydrodensitometry were 0.53, 0.69, and 0.78 for appearance in uniform, appearance in swimsuit, and fatness, respectively, for males in this sample. Similar correlations were 0.46, 0.60, and 0.70 for females. Analysis of variance using percent body fat as a covariate revealed significant gender and race main effects and gender effects by age.