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The purpose of this study was to obtain some anthropometric dimensions of students in secondary schools necessary for the design of school furniture and use them to establish the models that best determine the relationships among the anthropometric dimensions and standing height.

A total of 480 students aged 10 to 18 years (n = 480, SD = ± 2.3 years) were randomly selected from eight public and eight private secondary schools in Ibadan, South West Nigeria. All the dimensions were subjected to curve estimation using Statistical Products and Services Solution 16.0 Statistical Package. The models with p < 0.005 and highest coefficient of determinations were selected as the best models to predict the relationships among the standing height and other variables.

The study proposes 11 models using standing height to estimate necessary anthropometric dimensions for the design of school furniture. The results of the study show that all anthropometric dimensions correlate more non-linearly with standing height than linearly.

The proposed models will have wide applications for the estimation of anthropometric data necessary for the design and construction of school furniture for use in secondary schools in South Western Nigeria.

High levels of youth unemployment in Africa, the difficulty of accessing salaried jobs, and the weakness of public institutions in charge of employment issues push youths towards informal channels that can help them find jobs. Among these informal channels, religion has been playing an increasingly important role. Thus, this study aimed to analyse the effects of religion on youths' access to self-employment.

This study used data from the survey on the improvement of youth employment policies in Francophone Africa—conducted in 2018 by the Laboratory for Economic and Social Research and Studies (LARES) of Marien Ngouabi University—to estimate the effects of religion on access to self-employment. The econometric model employed is a two-stage model. Conditional mixed process developed by Roodman (2011) was used to verify the model's robustness.

The results indicate that religion exhibits a positive and significant effect on access to self-employment. This effect is stronger for youths from Muslim communities than for those from other religious communities, compared to youths who do not engage in religious communities.

Based on the current dynamics observed in numerous African countries with respect to employment access, these results imply that religious denominations should be considered when developing policies and programs related to employment, particularly for youths.

The approach followed in this study contributes to the literature predominantly by demonstrating how the network theory approach helps explain, to some extent, the link between religion and access to employment in general and access to self-employment, particularly in developing economies—mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, where the recourse to informal channels of access to self-employment constitutes a significant solution approach for youths.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-02-2023-0097