Analysis of Childhood Obesity Article (article is included)

Essay by Elixirfruit39University, Bachelor'sB+, October 2006

download word file, 6 pages 2.6

Downloaded 161 times

Childhood Obesity

This article focuses on 3 different studies that were carried out in China, the US and Australia related to childhood obesity. In the first, children ranging between the ages of 8-14 were studied. The focus was to study the children over a 16 month period and find the correlation between body image and the strategies used to lose weight and gain muscle. In the second, the focus of the study was to find out if there was any correlation between children eating dinner with their parents every night and obesity. Finally, in the third adolescents that were obese were studied with the focus being whether these children were more likely to suffer from blood pressure related health problems.

In this article, I found many concepts that related to our Psychology class. The main concept in this article was obesity, which we happened to study in chapter 11 of our book.

A person who is 20% above or more that their ideal average weight is considered obese. The article mentioned two types of research studied in class; longitudinal for the first research being carried out where children were being studied over a 16 month period , which is considered a long period if time. The second type of research mentioned was cross-sectional, which indicated that these children were all of different ages (8-14), but yet they shared one common characteristic, which in this case was obesity. Some other important things to mention that we have also reviewed in class, is the influence of other family members when it comes these children losing weight and the prevention of obesity in average children. In both cases, children were affected in a positive way by having their parents involved. In the first study we can see how the involvement of family members,