Abstract
Objectives : The middle school students'life style were studied with focus on Body Mass Index(BMI). Information was collected during 1st June 2009 to 10th July from 397 students(both male and female) by the subjective survey centered on personal characteristic, understanding about health in general, everyday activities, eating habits, preference in food, understanding about diet and obesity, and thoughts about fitness and diet. Methods : Students were selected from six classes by convenience sampling, then the final analysis was performed on 397 self-administered questionnaires, excepting 5 questionnaires, which have insincere answers. The data collection was carried out by SPSS(V.14.0 English Version), and the data was verified by $x^2$-test, ANOVA, multiple regression analysis. Results and Conclusion : The survey subjects were in the following distribution of body weights - underweight: 63.6%, normal weight: 29.5% and 6.9% were overweight. There was significantly different between BMI and mothers' occupation and satisfaction with school life(p<0.05). As for the analysis(multiple regression analysis) on understanding about health, the factors that affect BMI are self recognition of figure and efforts to reduce weight. In terms of efforts for one's own health, 78.2% of under weight and 82.3% of normal weight were taking active initiatives. But 85.2% of the overweight students were not giving any efforts. As for the free time activities, more than half answered, 'playing with computers'(48.4 - 66.7%, 1.57 hours on average). As for TV, on average, 2.03 hours were spent in overall. And it turned out that the overweight students spent more time watching TV by 46.49 minutes(0.77 hours) on average(p<0.05). 7.4 hours was the average sleeping time. As for the eating habit,'quantity of meal, snack, meal between meals, fat reduction, and supplementary food'were shown to be related to the BMI(p<0.05). The instant food, meat and sweet food were shown to be also related to the BMI. In terms of knowledge about overweight and diet, only 8 students(2% of the total) answered all 10 questions correct. On average, 7-8 questions were correctly answered(53.9 %). When the scores were analyzed against the BMI by classifying the scores to high, middle and low categories, it showed a relationship by different weight group(p<0.02), and the overweight students had higher score by 0.82 compared to the underweight students. When thoughts and attitude on fitness and diet were analyzed in relationship to the BMI, the result was only - "I try to eat fruits more often"(fruits)(p<0.00).
