Assessing the applicability of the digital laser rangefinder GLM Professional Bosch 250 VF for anthropometric field studies.

The digital laser rangefinder GLM Professional BoscH 250 VF was tested as a modified preproduction model with regard to its applicability of quantifying humans' height. The aim of this investigation was to determine and evaluate the instrument's precision, as well as its manageability within anthropometric field studies. Data collected by the digital laser rangefinder did not show a significant difference to data of control by an anthropometer. Furthermore, more than 96% of the difference values are located within area of agreement. Nevertheless, the GLM Professional is a highly sensitive instrument and mean SD within threefold data acquisition is twice as high as SD resulting from data collection by an anthropometer. However, due to the minimal percentage differences within data acquisition and compared to the standard method, the GLM Professional is proved to be a reliable instrument and to be highly applicable for anthropometric field studies. Furthermore, due to its excellent manageability and compact size, the GLM Professional shows a very good applicability even for less trained anthropometrists and thus ameliorates the possibilities of collecting reliable data within anthropometric field studies.