An Association of Backpack Weight and Postural Habits in School Going Children of Amritsar, Punjab, India

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to observe the association between backpack weight and postural habits taken in terms of lumbar flexion, lumbar extension and lumbar lateral flexion in school going children of Amritsar, Punjab, India. A total of 300 randomly selected normal healthy school going children (150 boys and 150 girls) aged 6-15 years of Amritsar were considered as study population. The samples were collected between July to October, 2007 from Khalsa College Public School, Amritsar, Punjab, India. Height, weight, backpack weight, percent backpack weight, lumbar flexion, lumbar extension and lumbar lateral flexion were measured on all the subjects. The results of the present study indicate statistically significant positive correlation between backpack weight and height (r=0.73), weight (r=0.57) and lumbar flexion (r=0.19) in boys and with height (r=0.65), weight (r=0.42) and lumbar extension (r=0.21) in girls. It may be concluded that backpack weight has some strong association with postural habits in the studied samples. The backpack weight carried by the school children was reported to be between 7.48% - 16.83% of their body weight.