The structure of body measurements for the determination of shoe sizing for young Croatian men.

The determination and promotion of the system of shoe sizing requires accurate knowledge of morphological properties of the foot and lower leg of the tested population. Similarly it is necessary to establish the occurrence and regional distribution of definite sizes in the tested population. Possible regional differences in morphological properties must not be ignored because it has been established by means of anthropological measuring that both foot dimensions and foot shapes differ between populations and within the same population. This has been proven by the investigation of body measures, carried out for the purpose of establishing a system of footwear sizes, which was executed on a randomly selected sample of 4,268 healthy and normally developed males aged 18-22. The investigation was carried out in 1993 on five locations each of which representing a definite region of the Republic of Croatia: Jastrebarsko (central), Koprivnica (northwestern), Pula (southwestern), Sinj (southern) and Pozega (northeastern). The measuring instrument was 31 foot and lower-leg sizes according to the existing ISO standards for footwear. Interregional differences are significant in all body measures. The role and the contribution of individual measures to these differences has been established by means of discriminatory analysis with regions as a priori defined samples. In order to constitute a convenient and purposeful standard for the footwear size system it is necessary to work out a database with referent values for the same system.