Comparison of body composition parameters of students in school of physical education and sports according to their birth months

Nowadays, body fat percentage has increasing importance in the determination of body composition. High percentage of body fat is an important risk factor for obesity whose connection with diabetes, hypertension and other serious diseases such as cancer has been proved. In addition to this, the body fat percentage is an important role in decreasing of sporty performance. In this study, changes of body composition parameters of male and female students of School of Physical Education and Sports in Gaziantep University according to birth dates and genders were invesitgated with the help of circumference, length and weight measurements. A total of 357 volunteers, 215 male students whose mean age was 22.470±0.163 years and 142 female students whose mean age was 21.183±0.150 years, participated. Age, height, weight, BMI (body mass index), % body fat (body fat percentage), waist-to-hip ratio and skinfold thickness measurements of the group participating to the study were obtained. Variance Analysis Technique was used for the comparison of group means in factorial design. Tukey's Multiple Comparison Test was used for the detection of the different groups. As a result of age, weight, height, BMI, body fat percentage, waist-hip ratio measurements, the interaction of birth month x gender and the effect of the birth date was not statistically significant (p>0.05), the effect of gender was found statistically significant (p<0.05) according to results of variance analysis performed statistically between two groups. Thus, it was specified that the differences between the genders didn't vary according to birth weight of athletes and didn't significantly affect the properties taken into account indifferences in birth months. On the other hands, gender differences have significantly affected the features taken into account. Except for% BF, means of male studentswere significantly higher than female students in terms of all the other features. It can be said that there is no significant difference between birth date and gender and gender difference affects all the other features in favor of males but means of females are higher than those of males with respect to BF %.