Applied Research Of Obese Parents And Overweight Children - Assignment Example

Applied Research Of Obese Parents And Overweight Children Participants The intervention was introduced in twenty schools of Westmoreland County. In the beginning of intervention, six students were randomly selected from every class irrespective of their gender whereas the age group of the selected sample was between 12-18 years with mean age being 15.48 and a total sample of 160 students. This selection was made to calculate average BMI and waist circumference and these two variables were to be used again at the end of six-month trial period. For the purpose of computing these averages, measurements of children’s height and weight was taken to the nearest of 0.1 cm and 0.1 kg respectively and children showing BMI>_ 25 were selected (James, Thomas & Kerr, 2007). Furthermore, Portable Leister height measure was used to ensure accuracy (Berry, Melkus, Savoye & Grey, 2007). The inclusion criteria disregarded age and ethnicity. Another sample constituted of parents was also selected where only an inclusion criterion was being a parent of children participating in the trial. The settings of the intervention were district schools in which students were provided with necessary theoretical training, physical activity programs, healthy food in school cafeteria and research assistants examining food journals maintained by children. Two control groups of parents and children were selected on the basis of similar criteria with no major baseline (p < .05) differences. The consent of participants’ parents was taken prior to commencing intervention and all the ethical conditions were met in the light of APA and AMA guidelines since the research included human subjects. Materials & Procedure a. Research Design During the intervention, all the participants of experimental and control groups were given training about nutrition and physical training twice a week. For nutritional education, children were taught about common foods leading to increased calorie intake and their hazards. They were also taught about how to make healthy nutrition choices. Another part of intervention was giving training to both the groups about physical exercise. Where control group was only given training, participants of experimental group were also made to attend a 45 minutes physical training program every day after school hours. School gymnasiums were used mainly for physical training classes. Children were also taught about dividing their exercise time during the day if they find it hard to take out 30 minutes together. In addition to that, behavioural training was given to parents of children from both groups twice a week where each training session consisted of 45 minutes. The content of these training sessions was intended to remain consistent with what children had learned during that week so that whatever information they received was enforced in domestic settings. b. Research Measures Data was collected at baseline of 2 months i.e. 2, 4 and 6 months. For the purpose of computation and data collection, a team of trained research assistants was recruited. These research assistants were not introduced to the sample earlier. These research assistants took measurements of height, weight and waist circumference of children from both groups of children at the baseline periods. In order to ensure accuracy of the measurements, Tanita Fat Scales and APA approved BMI formula (kg/ m2) was used (Berry et al., 2007). These scales were calibrated before every measurement in order to reduce errors in measurement. These research assistants also analyzed food journals of these participants at baseline period in order to calculate calorie intake and given directions to children and parents if they showed digression from the desired food choices. Parents were further asked to ensure that only correct information is entered in the books by the children. Furthermore, children were called in randomly twice a week for automated self-administered 24-hours dietary recall tool for strengthening the findings of journal examination (Steinberg et al., 2013). Also, Paffenbarger exercise habits questionnaire was used to analyze physical activity patterns in control and experimental groups. In order to compute changes in parents’ behaviour towards nutrition and physical activity, a questionnaire called family assessment device (FAD) was used (Berry et al., 2007). This test was accompanied by several other subtests and was intended to examine family functioning patterns with reference to new lifestyle changes. Higher scores in these tests would indicate negative functioning patterns. Overall reliability coefficients indicated scores to range between 0.60- 0.80. All the coefficients were computed at the interval of two months baseline period. Attendance of participants in training programs and activities was duly recorded. School administrators were involved to ensure that there was sufficient disciplinary enforcement on children and parents for participating in this trail. However, acceptable mean rate of attendance was kept at 90 percent so that necessary convenience is provided to participants in case of family emergency, health issues etc. In order to ensure that all the participants have uniform information, they were sent weekly summaries of trainings so that all the information remains accessible to them during the trial period. During this intervention, three students and their parents dropped out because of change in schools by two families and one child suffering an injury. Necessary statistical tools were used for tabulation and computation purposes. Tools used included Chi-Square and t-tests. These tests were used to compare characteristics of experimental and trial groups with reference to baseline criteria. For analyzing performance at baseline period (every two months), one-way ANOVA was used (Steinberg et al., 2013). Data accuracy was analyzed using available SPSS database (version 19.0) before computing differences between experimental and baseline group. A statistical significance was measured at scale of alpha Read More