1 Introduction

Head and face measurement data are important for technological design. The differences in head and face dimensions among various populations should be studied. The primary purpose of this research is to compare and discuss the presently available data for head and face dimensions among six countries, which covering Asia, South America, Africa and European.

2 Data Resources

The ISO/TR 7250-2:2010 “Basic human body measurements for technological design Part 2: Statistical summaries of body measurements from national populations” [1] provides statistical data for the head and face of the Adults, together with database background information. We select data from six countries to conduct the comparison (Table 1).

Table 1. Data resources
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Measuring conditions and definitions of measurements in this Technical Report are the same as those described in ISO 7250-1 [2]. All the data were measured by manual. In this Technical Report, the following statistics are described for each measurement: sample size, mean, standard deviation (SD), and 1st, 5th, 50th, 95th and 99th percentile values. Population can be stratified by gender, age, location, occupation or education.

3 Data Analysis

3.1 Basic Data Statistical Analysis

Three important items including head length, head breadth and face length were selected as data to be compared. The average and standard deviation (SD), see Table 2.

Table 2. Basic data statistical analysis
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The Newman-Keuls (N-K) [3] test method was used to compare the difference of the average data between the six countries. The results showed that most of the head and face size data between the six countries have significant difference (p < 0.05) between different countries. For the head length, there is much larger difference between Chinese and Kenyans, Chinese and Americans than the different between Chinese and Japanese, Chinese and South Koreans (Figs. 1 and 2).

Fig. 1.
figure 1

Head and face data for males in six countries (Color figure online)

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Fig. 2.
figure 2

Basic head and face data for females in six countries (Color figure online)

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The two figures show that the head length of male in China, Japan and South Korea are smaller than the head length in Netherland, America and Kenya, but the head breadth in the three Asia Countries are larger than the men in Netherland, America and Kenya. For the female, the data also have the same characteristic with the male data.

3.2 Proportion for Head Data

The proportion of the head length and head breadth could roughly describe the shape of the head. The proportion values see Table 3 and Fig. 3.

Table 3. Proportion for head data
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Fig. 3.
figure 3

Proportion for head data in six countries (Color figure online)

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The two table and figure above show that the proportion of head length and head breadth in China, Japan and South Korea are between 1.15–1.19 and 1.16–1.18 for male and female respectively, but the the proportion for head data in Netherland, America and Kenya are between 1.29–1.31 and 1.29–1.32 for male and female, which is much larger than the three Asian countries. The comparison shows that Asians heads can be generally characterized as rounder than the people’s head in Africa, America and European countries, and with a flatter back and forehead.

4 Results

The quantitative analyses of these head and face shape differences may be applied in many fields, including anthropometrics, product design and so on. When designing the products for the heads and face, such as headgears and headsets, the different anthropological head shape should be taken into consideration.