Abstract
The purpose of this study was to classify body types of 800 female junior and high school students based on factor analysis, cluster analysis, and correspondence analysis of 15 photometric measurements of the subjects' lateral body lines. The results are as follows: The skeleton structure, which was represented the back bending by the photometric measurement, was already formed at age of 12 or 13, while the cervical skeleton, the size and inclination of the shoulder, and the degree of the lateral inclination of the upper body and the buttocks continued to grow by the age of 16. A factor analysis of the photometric measurement resulted in the sampling which determined the degree of the back bending, front-bust angle, and lateral view as well as the sampling whose factor represented the cervical inclination. A cluster analysis of the photometric measurement resulted in the four types of classification: Type 1, the straight type comprising 13.3% of the whole population; Type 2, the bent-forward type comprising 39.5%; Type 3, the lean-back type comprising 27.4%; and Type 4, the swayback type comprising 19.1%. Accordingly, the bent-forward type was found to be the dominant type among the four lateral body types.