Child Obesity
One of the major contemporary research topics in psychology is child obesity (Lobstein, 2015). In the United States, a third of the children are obese or overweight. This number continues to increase every day.
It is a fact that children have less medical and health problems that are related to weight compared to adults. Even so, children who are overweight have a higher risk to become obese adults and adolescents, putting them at the risk of developing diseases that are chronic like diabetes and heart disease as they progress in life. They are also more likely to have sadness, stress, and self-esteem that is low.
Consequently, children acquire obesity or become overweight because of certain reasons. The most known causes are lack of physical activities, factors of genetics, eating patterns that are not healthy, or all these factors combined. Only in very few cases is obesity caused by a condition that is medical like a problem of hormones. This is proven by physical examination and blood tests. Also, not every child who has a history in the family of obesity will become overweight though problems of weight extend in families. Children with parents and siblings who are obese might be at a higher risk to become obese themselves, but this could be related to sharing behaviors of the family, like habits of activity and eating (Black, 2015).
The total diet of a child and the level of activity play a crucial part in the determination of the weight of a child. Nowadays, a lot of children spend too much time without activity. In an analysis, the typical child will spend close to four hours a day watching the television, and these hours spend without activity might increase with the increase in the popularity of video games and computers. Besides, not all children who have excess pounds are obese or overweight. Other children possess frames of the body with a larger size than average. Similarly, a child usually has differing levels of fat in the body through their various stages as they develop. Hence, it might be quite impossible to know whether a child has a concern of health just by how the child looks.
The index of body mass (BMI) (Locke, 2015) that provides a direction of how weight relates to height is the measure of obesity and overweight that is expected. The doctor of the child may use this index of body mass, charts of growth, and possibly other forms of tests to assist in determining whether the weight of the child threatens to cause problems of health. The major complications bought about by obesity in a child to the physical well-being of the child are: Type 2 diabetes which is a chronic condition that affects the manner in which the body of a child uses glucose; Metabolic syndrome which involves high sugar in the blood, hypertension, triglycerides in high levels, high quantities of fat in the abdomen and minimal good cholesterol conditions; Cholesterol and pressure that is high in the blood; Sleep disorders; Asthma; Fatty liver disease that is non-alcoholic (NAFLD), which leads to deposits of fat to accumulate in the liver and can cause scarring and damage of the liver and lastly, Bone fractures.
In conclusion, obesity in children is a condition that can be prevented. It is an excellent custom to take precautions to have or keep matters on the right course. Some of the precautions to be taken are limiting or stopping the consumption of beverages that are sweetened with sugar by the child, encouraging the child to eat much vegetables and fruits, eating meals as often as it is possible as a family, reducing the frequency of eating out at restaurants of fast-foods and in the case of eating out, showing the child healthier food choices, adjusting the amount of the portion of food according to the age, limiting television and other time spent before a screen to 2 hours or less per day for those children who are older than 2 years while disallowing screen time for those who are below the age and lastly making sure that the child acquires enough sleep (Barrera, 2016). It is also advisable together with these precautions that the child gets a checkup from the doctor about the well-being of the child at least once in a year.
For further research on the topic, I will have a schedule that will include Literature Review, Research Design and Methods, and Implications and Contributions to Knowledge (Starfield, 2018).
Literature Review
It gives a summary, critiques, and provides a comparison with of the most considered scholarly sources about the topic. It explores:
- Key Concepts, Studies, and Theories. The researcher is supposed to contrast, compare, and establish the concepts and theories that shall be most relevant for the project.
- Key Debates and Controversies. The researcher should indicate the conflict points and declare a position concerning the matter. Gaps in the Knowledge that exists. The researcher is supposed to show the missing aspect and the way in which the project will be able to fill the gap.
Research Design and Methods
Explains the approach of the researcher to the research and describing what the exact steps the researcher shall take to answer existing questions are.
- The research design involves an explanation of how the researcher will design the research, whether Qualitative or Quantitative, collection of Original data, or if the research is Descriptive, experimental, or correlational.
- Methods and Sources analyze the procedures, tools, participants, and research sources. It is where, what time, and the manner of collection, selection, and analysis of the data.
- Practical considerations are addressing any present obstacles, practical or ethical issues, and limitations. What the plan for dealing with the problems is.
Implications and Contributions to Knowledge
Emphasizes why the proposed project is crucial and its contribution to theory or practice.
- Practical implications are concerned with how the findings of the researcher will assist in the improvement of a process, how it will inform some policy, or create a case that will bring about substantial change.
- Theoretical implications deal with the possibility of the work of the researcher to help make a model or theory stronger, its ability to overrule assumptions currently, or whether it creates a foundation for more research.
This is the scheduled timetable: –
| Time in Weeks | ||||||||
| Week One | Week Two | Week Three | Week Four | Week Five | Week Six | Week Seven | Week Eight | |
| Literature Review | ||||||||
| Research Design and Methods | ||||||||
| Implications and Contributions |
References
Barrera, C. M. (2016). Age at introduction to solid foods and child obesity at 6 years. Childhood Obesity. 12(3), 188-192.
Black, J. A. (2015). Child obesity cut-offs as derived from parental perceptions: cross-sectional questionnaire. Br J Gen Pract, 65(633), e234-e239.
Lobstein, T. J.-L. (2015). Child and adolescent obesity: part of a bigger picture. The Lancet, 385(9986), 2510-2520.
Locke, A. E.-C. (2015). Genetic studies of body mass index yield new insights for obesity biology. Nature, 518(7538), 197.
Starfield, S. (2018). Writing a Research Proposal. In Palgrave Handbook of Applied Linguistics Research Methodology (pp. 183-197). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
