The lengths of spinal curvature stretch due to the angles of sitting on saddle chair to alleviate back pain: A statistical analysis

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Shanmugam, Ramalingam

Affiliations: Honorary Professor of International Studies, School of Health Administration, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA E-mail: rs25@txstate.edu

Abstract: BACKGROUND:By dividing the burden of one’s weight between the shins and the buttocks in the sitting position on an office or saddle chair, a person can avoid back pain. In this 21st century, sitting on a chair for long hours in workplace on office chair is unavoidable necessity and hence, millions in different countries undergo a risk for backpain. Is there a right sitting position? OBJECTIVE:The aim of this article is to find out how much a correlation exists between the angle of sitting and the length of spinal curvature which is the source of backpain. An experiment can be designed and carried out to measure various angles in sitting and the changing length of the person’s spinal cord curvature. METHOD:The usual statistical methodology requires a pair of values namely x and y to quantify the correlation. The data on sitting angles and the length of spinal curvature do not have such pairing, and hence, the traditional approach to find the correlation between the sitting angle and length of spinal curvature is not applicable. Yet, an approach is necessary. This article constructs an innovative statistical approach to fulfil this need. RESULTS:Our approach yields a correlation of 0.998 for sitting on office chair and an increased correlation of 0.999 on saddle chair, according to the Truszczyńska-Baszaka et al.’s data. CONCLUSIONS:An adjustment is made in various angles of sitting on office chair to transform the comfortable sitting on a saddle chair. In consequence, the proportional effect on the spinal curvature is estimable with the data and it is phenomenal (that is significantly more than one). No wonder people prefer saddle chair over office chair when it comes to avoid back pain and this article proves the convenience statistically.

Keywords: Bivariate distribution, linear model, conditional mean and variance, Kronecker vector

DOI: 10.3233/WOR-213433

Journal: Work, vol. 68, no. 4, pp. 1027-1033, 2021