Comparing different aspects of growth and development among preschool children

Abstract

Growth is an essential feature of life of a child that distinguishes him or her from an adult. The process of growth starts from the time of conception and continues until the child grows into a fully mature adult. A cross-sectional study was conducted in Karachi to know the Anthropometrics indices of middle socio-economic class school children in Karachi compared with NCHS (National Centre for Health Statistics) standards-a pilot study. The study found that height and weight of these children is below the NCHS centile for height and weight. The findings related to The comparison of urban and rural preschool children physical growth or anthropometrics measurement are as follows, the Mean, SD, Percentile and Mean Percentage of urban preschool children are 4.67, 0.47, 80% and 93.40% respectively. The Mean Percentage value of urban is 93.40 where as for rural it is 84.40. The Mean, SD, Percentile and Mean Percentage of rural preschool children were 4.22, 0.73, 60% and 84.40% respectively. Thus it indicates that the mean percentage was higher in the urban children. The Mean and SD of urban and rural preschool children’s motor development of urban were 8, and 1.59 respectively. In rural the mean and standard deviation was 12.28 and 1.53 respectively. The Mean and SD of urban and rural preschool children’s cognitive development of urban were 13.93, and 1respectively. In rural, the Mean and SD was 8.92, and 1.11 respectively. The paired t-test was carried out to compare the selected aspects of growth and development of urban and rural preschool children and the value obtained for growth was 2.02 and was found significant at 0.05 levels. The paired t-test was calculated for comparison of motor development of pre-school children and the calculated value is 9.68 for the cognitive development the paired t-test value is 1.02 and shows significant at 0.05 levels.