Malays. Appl. Biol. (2016) 45(2): 113–118
BODY WEIGHT ESTIMATION FROM VARIOUS FOOTPRINT LENGTH MEASUREMENTS AMONG IBANS OF EAST MALAYSIA
NATARAJA MOORTHY, T.1* and HAIRUNNISA BT MOHD ANAS KHAN2
1Associate Professor, Department of Forensic Sciences, Management and Science University,
Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia
2Forensic Division, Chemistry Department of Malaysia, Kuching,
Sarawak, East Malaysia
*Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; HP: +6 0129224610
Accepted 27 October 2016, Published online 21 December 2016
ABSTRACT
Foot impressions are still found at crime scenes. The foot impressions can be used to estimate stature, gender and body weight of an individual. Most of the foot/foot print studies were conducted on mixed population. But racial and cultural aspects of foot morphology must be considered while conducting such studies. Hence the present study aims to estimate body weight from bilateral footprints collected from 240 (120 males, 120 females) consenting adult Iban ethnics, an indigenous groups residing in east Malaysia. Informed consent and Human Ethical Approval were obtained. The body weight of the living individuals and footprints were collected following the standard procedure. The data obtained were analyzed with PASW 20 computer software and derived regression formulae to estimate body from footprint lengths of Iban population. Investigation revealed that all footprint lengths exhibit statistically positive significant correlation with body weight (p<0.001). Correlation coefficient (R) values are found to be higher in the pooled sample (0.262–0.356) when compared with males (0.082–0.338) and females (0.104–0.249). The regression formulae derived for the pooled sample can be used to estimate body weight when the sex of the footprint remains unknown, as in real crime scenarios.
Key words: Forensic science, body weight estimation, footprint length, Iban ethnics, East Malaysia
