A questionnaire survey was conducted on working women to investigate the types of shoes responsible for variety of podiatric disease occuring during wear of shoes. The following results were obtained.
1) In spite of a high percentage of women wearing relatively low-heeled shoes, various complaints related to shoes were raised by a large number of workers. On examining the frequencies of six kinds (for example, shoe sore and impelling feeling of walking around bare-foot) of complaint, the number of workers with complaints amounted to more than 50%.
2) During working hours, most of the subjects tended to work with low-heeled shoes by changing their shoes which they wore for commutation. Of department store workers, a larger number of workers preferred to change their shoes to shoes with higher heels compared to workers engaged in other types of profession.
3) The rate of hallux valgus tended to increase in women with broad feet, compared to those without them.
4) In the purchase of shoes, “comfortableness during wear” was the motivating factor to which the majority of workers attached great importance. This was followed by “design”. The general tendency was that in the choice of shoes, “design” was a more appealing factor for younger generation workers and “comfortableness” became more important with advance in age.
5) Only 20% were satisfied with the shoes purchased. The over-whelming majority had some kind of dissatisfaction.
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