Latent Relations Between Selected Morphometric, Physiological and Biochemical Parameters

Abstract

The main purpose of this study was to explore the latent relations of the selected morphometric, physiological and biochemical parameters. Thirty-six variables (12 morphometric, 9 physiological and 15 biochemical variables) were measured on 317 male-entities aged 17-35 y/o. The obtained data were analysed through the factor analysis of the first and second order. The statistical analyses were performed with the IBM SPSS Statistics software package, version 20. The factorization of the first order enabled extraction of 12 latent factors that explain 74.8 % of the total variance, while the factorization of the second order enabled extraction of five latent components that explain 51.39 % of the total variance. The final results of this study confirm the main hypothesis that there exist the numbers of latent variables that explain the latent structure of selected biometric measures. The nature of the extracted latent factors/ components in both orders of factorization is relatively clear, understandable, and easy to interpret. The higher projections of the manifest biometric variables on the extracted latent factors of the first and second order were accordingly with the nature of the measured variables. The results of this research might be considered as one step more in the holistic approach to the biometric measures.