A local health department is developing a program to help stop the childhood obe

Question

A local health department is developing a program to help stop the childhood obesity epidemic in your county. The nurses, nutritionists, epidemiologists, social-workers and other public health officials at the health department recognize that obesity is a problem for children of all ages, not just school-age children. The public health officials are going to target their program to not only schools, but also to homes and day-care facilities. They want to see if the younger children participating in the program have better outcomes (less obesity) than the school-age participants.

You are hired as a research consultant to help them with planning and especially with advertising this new program. What is the research problem in this situation?

Your first task as the research consultant is to identify hypotheses and assumptions that underlie the research effort. In this case, you think the health department already has both. What is their likely hypothesis? Is it your hypothesis too, as the consultant?

What are some of the assumptions that underlie this effort?

As the research consultant, you searched the Internet and the library for information about childhood obesity interventions. There is a LOT out there: studies, summaries, reviews, and opinions. You then write a lengthy report summarizing your findings and present it to the health department. Did you engage in research? Why or why not?

Explanation / Answer

Hypothesis: Early childhood interventions in the form of dietary training and regular physical activity will prevent the development of obesity.

Research problem: To identify the likely areas of intervention like schools, homes, playing grounds etc. where the impact will be high.

After going through a lot of information in the form of studies, summaries, reviews and opinions, we are actually engaging in research. This is because we are summarising the results from various sources into one single conclusion.

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