MEDS2001 - PULMONARY PRAC REPORT - 520462322

THE INFLUENCE OF GENDER AND HEIGHT ON THE TOTAL LUNG CAPACITIES OF

UNIVERSITY STUDENTS.

Figure one: The relationship between Gender and total lung capacity. The graph depicts the
relationship between Gender and total lung capacity (TLC) where a male is someone who
produces sperm (n=10) and a female is someone who produces eggs (n=17). The data was
collected using a spirometer and the spirometer tracing was displayed by lt kuracloud for
analysis. The data analyzed and depicted was the total lung capacity (TLC) (the total amount of
air expelled in a breath) which is calculated by TLC = VC + RV. The gray circles represent
individual data points whereas the yellow columns represent the averages for each sex. The
error bars represent standard deviations. The P value was determined using a t-test assuming
unequal variance on excel and was found to be 0.00059 (to 2dp). A P value is held to be
significant when <0.05 and therefore, the difference between female and male total lung
capacities is significant .
MEDS2001 - PULMONARY PRAC REPORT - 520462322

Figure 2: The relationship between height and total lung capacity. Graph illustrating the
relationship between height and total lung capacity where tall is considered 171 cm and taller (n
=12) and short is considered equal to or less than 170 cm tall (n=15). The data was collected
using a spirometer and the spirometer tracing was displayed by lt kuracloud for analysis. The
spirometer tracing was used to determine the total lung capacity, or the amount of air expelled in
a breath, using TLC (= VC + RV). The error bars represent standard deviations whereas the
gray circular markers represent the individual class data points. The blue columns represent the
average total lung capacities by height. The p value for each variable was determined using a
t-test assuming unequal variance on excel and found to be 0.00013 (to 2 dp). A p value is held
to be significant if p<0.05 so there is a significant difference between tall and short total lung
capacities.

— QUESTIONS

This study found a significant difference between female (x̄ = 4.7) and male (x̄ = 6.5) TLCs (p=
0.00059).There was also a significant difference between short (x̄ = 4.6) and tall (x̄ =6.5) TLCs
(p = 0.00013). Therefore the data suggests that gender and height does affect TLCs.

A column graph with a scattered overlay was chosen to represent the data because of the large
standard deviations between individual data points. This meant that the averages of the
variables (the column graphs) could not holistically represent the data. The only way to do so
was a column graph with a scattered overlay as this includes the mean of the groups and also
each individual data point. Although this graph is busy and the error bars are slightly hidden, i
decided that the meaningfully representing the whole data set warranted the use of this graph
type

Since each data set only had 2 groups, a t-test was used for statistical analysis as ANOVA is
generally used for comparison of three or more groups. Additionally, the data had large
differences in sample size which generally causes unequal variance. This led us to choose a
t-test since ANOVA assumes equal variance while a t-test can be specified for unequal
variance. Moreover, none of the different subtypes of ANOVA–one way (three plus groups), two
way (two independent variables), multivariate (multiple variables) and repeated measures
(repeated individual data)--suited our data. Therefore a t-test was used for statistical analysis.