SizeNorthAmerica—The New North American Anthropometric Survey: Conceptual Design, Implementation and Results

Abstract

Size NorthAmerica is a comprehensive look at today’s population to provide vital information of body shape and size to numerous industries. Understanding the human body provides a critical advantage for usability of any product or service. Prior studies are both out of date and had minimal industry input to ensure relevancy of final data gathered throughout the studies. There has been very little previous research focusing on children, ethnicities and regional differentiation. In addition, by including sociodemographic information of the subjects; it provides a realistic profile of how physical and characteristical data correlates amongst the participants. By incorporating the guidelines of ISO standards 20685, 15535, 8550 and 7250 and ASTM garment construction; the study will meet and exceed any requirements for products in Automotive, Apparel, Consumer, Digital, Medical and Military. An active sampling strategy will prioritize data as it is collected from near 18000 participants throughout the USA and Canada. Partnering with universities and the industry at large creates unique opportunities to create a clear picture of the population and target audiences simultaneously with the highest accuracy. It will also serve as a strong foundation for future projects focusing on body profiling, morphotypes and CAD application, while providing specific insights needed by each industry sector. While data from previous studies may be accelerated and extrapolated; it is still very much up to interpretation and prediction. Conducting studies actively to create concrete data that is representative reduces much of the variability that is biproduct and inherent of previous data and allows subscribers of the study the utmost accuracy in their work respectively.