Does Age and Body Composition Affect Speed - Research Proposal Example

The paper 'Does Age and Body Composition Affect Speed?' is a marvelous example of a research proposal on health science and medicine.
Research has identified multiple essential factors that contribute to the ability of older adults to live independently. In any case of adverse health events such as mortality, disability, and hospitalization, the physical performance includes speed could be significantly used to predict such an event (Cesari et al, 1676). Prior studies have indicated that physical function including such as speed declines with age. In age description and functionality, speed has become found simple but a critical indicator where slower speed is associated with the old age. When walking, it requires one to have energy and coordination and when the speed in walking declines, it shows that the available energy for speed has declined (Huang et al, 187). Similarly, body composition such as lower lean mass and excess adipose tissue is related to poor physical performance such as speed, especially in older people. Elsewhere, lower muscle mass has a relationship with the higher risks of losing mobility in people of old age (Makizako et al, 608). Therefore, the current study focuses on assessing how body composition and age are associated with speed.

Research Questions

• Does Age and Body Composition affect Speed?"

Hypotheses

• H1: Both Age and Body Composition affect the Speed
• H0: Age and Body Composition do not affect the Speed

Variables

The study involved three variables; one being dependent variables while two were the independent variables. Body composition and age were used in the study as independent variables while speed was the dependent variable. For body composition, the specific focus was on the lower lean mass and excess adipose tissue that was found to show how the body functions physically indicating that it impacts how speed happens hence an independent factor. Age also affects the speed while speed depends on both age and body composition thus naming it as a dependent variable.

Participants

The study included 40 participants who were not trained. The composition of participants included 23 men and 17 women. The age of participants ranges between 20 and 33 years and are grouped into four groups.

Methodology

The analysis involved the cross-sectional data of 40 adults living in the community. Walking speed was used to measure the physical performance while a bioelectrical impedance analyzer was used to measure parameters of body composition which include fat mass, lean mass, and adipose tissue. Participants were then divided into four groups randomly for identification. Group one had 10 participants, group two had 10, group three also 10, and finally group four also 10 participants. The test was carried out on the correlations between age and the walking speed and the parameters of the body composition. The analyzed data included fat percentage, Z-score, and T-score. A 10-m walk test was used to evaluate the walking speed. Statistical analysis involved descriptive analysis for all groups of men and women, standard deviation, and mean. An IBM SPSS 20.0 was used to perform all data analyses where  < 0.05 means statistical significance.

Descriptive

Sample size is 40, Male= 23, Female=17

Variables

mean

Standard deviation

Min. value

Max. value

Range of values

Age

23.25

3.12

20

33

13

Body comp.

15.78

5.32

7.0

27.56

20.56

Variable 1

55.43

9.42

26.67

80

43.33

Variable 2

112.33

15.67

61

188

127

Variable 3

2.07

1.01

1.4

2.51

1.11

Results and discussion

From the results, the significance value for the age is 0.01. This value is below 0.05 to indicate that there is a strong relationship between age and the speed in human beings. For body composition, the p-value is 0.03 showing a lower value to 0.05. It also signifies a correlation between body composition and speed. Data from the graph shows that as the age increased, the walking speed reduced. Similarly, excess adipose tissue and lower lean mass reduced the speed. This result proves the alternate hypothesis that speed reduces with age and disapproves null hypothesis that body composition does not affect speed.