PREDICTING EQUATIONS FOR MEASURING VITAL CAPACITY OF THE RAJSHAHI UNIVERSITY STUDENTS.

Objectives: The purpose of the present study was to predict vital capacity for the students of Rajshahi University. Materials and Methods: This study was performed on 862 students (578 males and 284 females) who were selected through stratified random sampling technique from the University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh. The variables used in this study were stature, weight, vital capacity (VC), sitting height, pulse rate, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, oxygen saturation and chest circumference those were measured accordingly and analyzed using the software IBM SPSS Statistics 20 and STATISTICA 8. Forward stepwise ridge regression method was used for prediction purpose. Results: Two easily accessible predicting equations for measuring vital capacity of the male and female students were proposed. Only, height, sitting height and chest circumference for the equation of male students and height, sitting height and weight for the equation of female students were essential. The proposed two equations were highly robust with small standard error of the estimate. Conclusion: To assess the expensive body parameter, vital capacity, the student of Rajshahi University as well as the students of other universities can use the proposed equations for measuring their vital capacity.