A Survey of Life Style Habits of Obese School Children

학령기 비만아동의 생활습관에 관한 조사연구

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of obese school children's life style habits in order to help school nurse in controlling and preventing the obesity by health education The survey group is extracted from the students of two elementary schools located in Seongnam city Out of 280 children randomly sampled, 102 children were evaluated to be obese and 178 ones to be normal by the standard of the 1985 Korea Pediatric Association Height and Weight Standard Chart The obese children group was compared with the normal one. For this purpose, the surveyors designed a self questionnaire to obtain the description of general background, exercise including play behavior, eating behavior, and family environment of the sampled children. The results are as follows The number of the obese children who took extracurricular physical exercises was significantly (p<0.05) more than that of the normal ones The significantly (p<0.05) more obese children went without a meal to control their weight than the normal ones. In relation to the degree of obesity, the children with the high degree of obesity watched the television significantly (p<0.05) longer than the ones with the mild and the moderate degree of obesity In gender relations, the obese girls participate in outdoorplays and physical exercises significantly (p<0.05) longer and more regularly than the normal ones, while no significant difference was found between the male groups The obese boys had significantly (p<0.05) their mothers occupying in a vocation. Combining television watching habit and mother's vocation of the obese boy, the obesity is resulted from complicated situation It can not be due to the simple absence of the mother, but rather due to the absence of a person responsible for controlling snacking and television watching time of the child Looking at the results, it is necessary for both school and home to actively involve in guiding children and providing an environment to modify life style habits and prevent childhood obesity.