The influence of defective physique and unfavourable home environment on the intelligence of school children : being a statistical examination of the London County Council pioneer school survey / by David Heron.

  • Heron, David
Date:
1910
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The influence of defective physique and unfavourable home environment on the intelligence of school children : being a statistical examination of the London County Council pioneer school survey / by David Heron. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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    TABLE XXL The Changes made by Correcting for Differences in Age Distribution on Averages of Heights and Weights of Glasgow Children. Number of Rooms in House. Averages before Correction.* Averages after Correction. Height (inches). Weight (lbs.). Height (inches). Weight (lbs.). Boys. Girls. Boys. Girls. Boys. Girls. Boys. Girls. One. Two. Three. Four. 46-6 48-1 50- 0 51- 3 46- 3 47- 8 49-6 51-6 52-6 56-1 60-6 64-3 51-5 54-8 59-4 65-5 47- 6 48- 4 49- 4 50- 0 47- 6 48- 2 49- 1 49-8 54-9 56-9 59- 0 60- 4 54-4 56- 0 57- 8 59-8 Eange. 4-7 5-3 11-7 140 2-4 2-2 5-5 5-4 It will be seen from this table that the range is now less than half what it was before correction. Instead of boys from one-roomed houses being 11-7 lb. lighter and 4-7 inches smaller than boys from fom*-roomed houses, these differences are now only 5-5 lb. and 2-4 inches ; instead of differences among the girls of 14 lb. and 5-3 inches we get differences of 5-4 lb. and 2-2 inches. The explanation of the marked change in these results is that among one-roomed boys only 2-4 per cent^ are aged 14 and upwards, while among four-roomed boys the percentage is 11-9 ; among one-roomed girls only 2-3 per cent, are aged 14 and upwards, while among four-roomed girls the percentage rises to 14- 8. As the number of children in a family increase they require of course more accommodation, even though there be no improvement in their circumstances. The housing conditions of children cannot be estimated accurately from a knowledge of the number of rooms alone ; we require also the number of persons who occupy those rooms, so as to obtain the number of persons per room, which gives a far better idea of the home conditions of the children. Can we say, then, that even these smaller differences are certainly due to bad home conditions ? By no means. Mr. Tocher f has shown how widely divergent are the different districts of Glasgow in regard to hair and eye colour, and until we have allowed for these racial differences we cannot definitely assert that bad home conditions have any influence on the stature and weight of the children. The correlation coefficients which indicate the relationship between age and height and between age and weight are given in Table XXII. There are obviously significant differences between the schools, but in the most divergent case this is due to an arbitrary age selection of the children, Standards I and II not being available. The regression coefficients, on the other hand^ are practically equal, i. e. the slope of the regression lines are nearly the same in the different schools * Extracted from Mackenzie and Foster's Report, p. 56, Table 61. t Biometrika, vol. vi, p. 1291.
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