Natural variation

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• I made sure the toes were not scrunched and marked with a pen from toe to heel
• After I marked the point of the toe and heel, I used a ruler to measure the markings for precision. The children ranged from 15-23cm in foot size.
• After I measured their foot I measured the height of the children. I made sure they stood straight against a wall with their heels touching the wall.
• When parents came to pick their child up, I asked them to come into the office where I was doing my investigation. I questioned the parents about their background information. The parents were willing to answer questions after I explained to them about my investigation. Most parents were helpful.
• I cross checked different information for example, if there was any correlation for children who exercised regularly, or children who ate healthier foods etc.

 Questionnaire

Child

Name of child:                                DOB                

Ethnic background:

European            Asian             African          Middle Eastern                  Other

Shoe size                height

Usual footwear

Boots              trainers           shoes            sandals            other  

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Do you get fitted regularly?

Yes         no

Diet and Nutrition

How often do you eat:

 Fruit and veg?

Rarely                                   everyday                        few times a week

 Meat?

Rarely                   everyday                  few times a week

 Chicken?

Rarely                 everyday             few times a week

  Fish?

Rarely                everyday             few times a week

 How many glasses of water do you drink a day

  1-2                         2-3                            3-4                        4-5 

Type of water:   Tap             bottle

How often do you drink:

 Fizzy drink

 Everyday                2-3 times a week                   3-4 times a week                never

Milk

Everyday             2-3 times a week               3-4 times a week                never

 How often you eat fast foods

Everyday             2-3 times a week             3-4 times a week                          never

        

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Health

 How often you exercise

Rarely               sometimes               often

Any sports club

  Child’s health generally good

Bad             good          average  

  Large or small body mass

Large               average            small

Parent

Name         DOB      

 Health generally good

Good              average                 bad

  Large or small body mass

Large          average            small

  Exercise

Rarely                 sometimes               often

Height                           foot size

Age of mother at the birth of the child

 How many other children

Profession        Profession        

 Was the child full term or premature

Full term             premature                

 If premature how early was the baby?

General diet of mother during pregnancy

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Results:

Table of my results

Figure 2

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Figure 4

 

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Figure 3 shows that overall; there is not a great deal of difference in foot sizes of boys and girls of all ages. However the youngest child,

born in 2003, seems to have a larger foot size than most girls. But some girls have larger foot sizes than boys. So there is zero correlation between age and foot size. Figure 3, shows that boys generally have bigger feet than girls.

Figure 4 shows no correlation between foot size and age. Although some younger children have smaller feet, some older children also have small feet. Realistically there is zero correlation and this basically shows that age has nothing to do with foot size.

Evaluation

The questionnaire showed a lot of differences between the children’s nutritional diet and their health. I did not find any correlations between the child’s foot growth and their diet. I cross referenced the questionnaire as it helped me look at the correlation between height and foot size. I did not find any evidence with girls but amongst boys, I found that the taller they were, the bigger their foot size was.

Figure 2 shows that boys have naturally bigger foot sizes than girls. Figure 3 shows that the largest foot size was a boy’s and the smallest foot size was a girl’s. Maybe boy’s foot sizes point towards the fact that they will grow taller because males are generally taller than females. Boys have a hormone called androgen that gives them male features; hence they are larger than females.

I found correlations between the children’s height and their foot size. The taller they were, the bigger their foot size. There was a correlation between the parent’s foot size and the child’s. Children

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with small feet also had parents with small feet. This means that genetics mostly affect a child’s growth. Obviously, their DNA has helped them with their foot size. Because of DNA we can almost predict how a child will grow. Also, sex cells are passed down from the parents to the child for example; sperm or egg cells and the child conceived this, so half of his genes were from his mum and half from his dad.

There is an anomaly with one child, who has a large foot size and yet he is in the shortest category in height. Both his parents are short. When the parents were further questioned, it was found that one grandparent was tall. This shows he probably inherited his genes from his grandfather. The boy has taken the dominant allele from his grandfather which has made his foot size large. We could further speculate that maybe the child will be taller than his parents because of his foot size. The fact was highlighted that genes play a major part in foot size.

My hypothesis of the taller the child the larger the foot, seems to be verified by this study. However my expectations that bad footwear could stunt growth would need to be further investigated with a larger group, simply because I only found two children with impaired feet. Another factor that I would need to study would be the correlation between low income parents and bad footwear.

 * I found a correlation between children who didn’t get their feet measured regularly and low income parents. In two of these cases there was even a slight deformity of the foot where the big toe curled making measurements harder, this points towards the environment contributing to foot size. However, this could just be

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because of preconceived ideas on my part therefore it would need a more thorough investigative report.

Also the preliminary results showed that the children, who were questioned, didn’t know how to answer some of the questions, even simple questions like their ages ,so I asked the parents instead. This was helpful as it gave me a better understanding of how genetics work. However it was difficult to persuade the parents to take time out and answer the questionnaire. To overcome this, other staff members helped me to ask the parents questions as they only had so much time. I also found it difficult to ask the parents questions as they were from different ethnic backgrounds so others helped me translate the questions in their language. I also used the staff to help write down the answers as some of the parents could not write because they lacked English.

I would have liked to have measured both feet, but there was only a limited amount of time, the centre let me measure the children. In future it would be interesting to look at variation of the left and right foot.

Reference and Literature cited

 The NEC biology file

GCSE Biology textbook