Population
For this study, middle-aged women will be evaluated to determine their eating behaviors and their role in the development of obesity. Additionally, other factors, such as socio-economic status and educational attainment, will be considered in the study. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the prevalence of obesity has been increasing since 1999, with the obesity rate being 30.5% between 1999-2000 and 42.4% between 2017-2018. The severe obesity rate increased from 4.7% to 9.2% within the same period ("Obesity is a Common, Serious, and Costly Disease," 2020). The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) reported that obesity rates were higher in women than in men. Between 2013-2014, the obesity rate in women was 40.4% compared to that of men at 37.7%. Additionally, women also exhibited a higher extreme obesity rate at 9.9% in comparison to that of men at 5.5% (NIDDK) ("Overweight & Obesity Statistics | NIDDK," 2020).
Survey Questions
The following survey questions will be asked to gather data about the role of eating behavior in obesity development among middle-aged women. The questions will be presented in the form of a questionnaire. Answers will be provided on a Likert-type scale, as described in the table below.
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|
Survey Question |
Rationale |
| I love food. | This question is meant to determine the participants' attitudes about food. |
| I eat more when I’m annoyed. | This question is meant to assess eating behavior. |
| I eat more when I’m worried or upset. | This question is meant to assess eating behavior and determine emotional over or under-eating. |
| I often feel hungry when I’m with someone who is eating. | Used to determine eating frequency. |
| Given a choice, I would eat most of the time. | Used to determine eating frequency and attitude about food. |
| Do you find any of these foods tempting? | It determines the self-regulation of eating behavior questionnaire. |
| Do you intend to have a healthy diet? ("Eating behaviour questionnaires," 2020) | The question is meant to assess the participants' awareness of healthy diets. |
Types of Variables
Variables that will be used in the study include; weight, height, body mass index (BMI), frequency of eating, and obesity. Types of variables included in the study are continuous variables.
Dissemination of Survey
The survey will be posted via email and on Facebook based on whether selected participants are familiar with social media applications. If participants are not familiar with such applications and are not computer literate, surveys will be delivered via postal shipping.
Data Collection
Eating behavior data will be collected using excel and Facebook questions.
Sampling Method
A probability sampling method is chosen for this study. Clustered sampling will be used to identify study participants. The population will be grouped into smaller subgroups, of which some will be selected for random sampling. The clusters will be defined based on public hospital districts. Using clustered sampling increases fieldwork efficiency. It is also more convenient and makes the sampling procedure easier.
Additionally, this method will also require fewer resources making it more economical and reducing budget restraints. It will help identify a larger sample size for a similar fixed cost compared to other sampling methods, such as random sampling. It also increases the feasibility of the sampling (Jawale, 2012). A simple two-stage cluster sample will be selected for the study. Sampling will be done in two stages, including selecting the clusters using simple random sampling, followed by selecting elements in the selected clusters using simple random sampling.
Types of Graphs that are Appropriate for Eating Behavior and Obesity Data
Bar graphs will be used to present information about the prevalence of obesity among different ethnicities and races. Bar graphs are more advantageous and convenient since they require less viewing time, making them the most appropriate for data presentation for scientific and non-scientific crowds. They are also associated with high levels of recall accuracy and understanding. The bar graphs will also permit the presentation of the frequency distribution in each data category. They will also allow the estimation of key values at a glance and support comparison between data sets (Brewer et al., 2012).
Apart from bar graphs, scatter plots can also give a visual presentation of the relationship between variables, such as eating frequency and obesity rates. One of the primary advantages of scatter plots is that they enable the use of multiple visual channels to encode multivariate data sets. The visualizations can utilize different shapes, sizes, and colors since these dimensions are separable (Smart & Szafir, 2019).
Descriptive Statistics
One of the most critical descriptive statistics methods used in the study is the mean, which is a measure of central tendency. BMI will be calculated as a mean of the target population identified and involved in the study. The average weight and height of the selected population will also be calculated using the mean. Median will be used to determine the middle value of height, weight, BMI, and eating frequency. The mode will be used to determine the BMI value and eating frequency that occurs most often. Some measures of dispersion and variability that will be used in the study include range, standard deviation, and standard error. The range will be used to show the highest and lowest value in BMI data sets. Standard deviations and standard errors will be used to define the variability of a sample and confidence levels. Lastly, percentile ranks will also be used to compare eating behavior scores to normalized scores (Mishra et al., 2019).
References
Brewer, N. T., Gilkey, M. B., Lillie, S. E., Hesse, B. W., & Sheridan, S. L. (2012). Tables or bar graphs? Presenting test results in electronic medical records. Medical Decision Making , 32 (4), 545-553. https://doi.org/10.1177/0272989X12441395
Eating behaviour questionnaires . Institute of Epidemiology & Health Care. (2020). Retrieved August 2, 2020, from https://www.ucl.ac.uk/epidemiology-health-care/research/behavioural-science-and-health/resources/questionnaires/eating-behaviour-questionnaires.
Jawale, K. V. (2012). Methods of sampling design in the legal research: Advantages and disadvantages. Online International Interdisciplinary Research Journal , 2 (6), 183-190.
Mishra, P., Pandey, C. M., Singh, U., Gupta, A., Sahu, C., & Keshri, A. (2019). Descriptive statistics and normality tests for statistical data. Annals of cardiac anaesthesia , 22 (1), 67.
Obesity is a Common, Serious, and Costly Disease . Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2020). Retrieved August 2, 2020, from https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html.
Overweight & Obesity Statistics | NIDDK . National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. (2020). Retrieved August 2, 2020, from https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/health-statistics/overweight-obesity.
Smart, S., & Szafir, D. A. (2019, May). Measuring the separability of shape, size, and color in scatterplots. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-14).
