Health Promotion D88X 04

Dieting behaviour and views of young children in Wales

Suggested Answers

Q1 Why was the study carried out – what were the background factors?

Concerns arose from existing studies showing a high level of dieting and concern about weight among adolescent children/young people – give examples from the text. There are also concerns about the effects of this behaviour, e.g. development of eating disorders, poor academic performance.

This particular study was carried out to establish whether these concerns/behaviours were also present in younger children, aged 6 – 9 years.

Q2 What research methods were used? List two advantages and two disadvantages of these methods.

Individual interviews were conducted with the children.

Advantages of interviews – easy to clarify whether children understand the question/what they mean by their answers; in-depth responses; can do follow up questions, good qualitative information.

Disadvantages of interviews – end up with too much information, difficult to quantify information/compare one individual with another, timeconsuming.

You might also mention that secondary research (census results and existing, published research) were analysed.

Q3 What sampling technique was used?

It doesn’t give us a great level of detail on the sampling techniques, however you can describe the samples (50 infants and 50 juniors, four different schools, 25 boys and 25 girls). As it doesn’t specify that these were randomly selected samples (i.e. randomly selected from the school roles of the four schools), we can assume that it was opportunity sampling – i.e. they went to the schools and chose children to participate. (NB. The study used in the assessment will give more detail on the sampling technique).

Q4 How was the data presented? Was it qualitative, quantitative or a combination of the two?

Although the interview method would usually generate qualitative data, in this case the researchers have attempted to quantify the data (i.e. by putting students into categories such as preferred body size – ‘thinner’, ‘same’ or ‘fatter’). This data has then been presented in a series tables, with both the actual number of respondents and also a percentage figure.

This suggested that the interviews were structured, with precise questions agreed in advance, and every child asked the same questions.

Q5 Give one alternative way in which the data could have been presented

The data could have been presented as a bar chart or as a pie chart. This would have had advantages in that the reader would get a quick overview of the results, but disadvantages in that they would not get the in-depth figures. As the precise figures are important to this study (and to the likely readers of the study), the researchers were correct to use tables.

Q6 Summarise the main findings of the study

Although a majority of children were happy with their weight, a significant minority expressed a desire to be thinner (26% of infants, 34% of juniors). Of this group, there were equal numbers of boys and girls in the infants group, but in the juniors age group there were more girls than boys who wanted to be thinner. More girls than boys had acted on this desire by cutting down on their food intake. Very few children wanted to be fatter.

The study concluded that children associate being healthy with being thin, and that the attitudes towards dieting and body image that have long been associated with teenage girls are also present in both boys and girls in younger age groups.

Q7 What did the study do well? What were its weaknesses?

Strengths – the researchers seemed to take into account that they were working with a very young group of children and took appropriate measures such as checking that children understood the concepts involved and excluding those who didn’t. The use of individual interviews was more appropriate with this age group than questionnaires, for example, as the younger children would be at an early stage of development in terms of reading and writing skills.

Weaknesses – the researchers themselves identify several weaknesses, including the small sample, doubt over whether the children fully understood the concepts and a lack of evidence other than the children’s own reports of their behaviour. This might have been overcome, for example, by asking the children or their parents/carers to keep a food diary, or interviewing parents on their children’s eating habits.

The small sample is a particular problem as it was likely to be culturally biased and the children all came from similar social backgrounds.

The presentation of data could have been improved – e.g. the tables didn’t give a gender breakdown.