Weight Bias among Dietetics Students: Implications for Treatment Practices
Weight Bias among Dietetics Students: Implications for Treatment Practices
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DOI：
10.1016/j.jada.2008.11.034
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发表时间：
2009-03-01
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Heuer, Chelsea
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Puhl, Rebecca;Wharton, Christopher;Heuer, Chelsea
Background Several studies have examined attitudes about obesity among food and nutrition professionals, yielding mixed results, and no experimental research has tested the impact of dietitians' attitudes on their treatment practices or health evaluations with obese patients.Objective This study investigated attitudes of dietetics students toward obese persons and tested whether a patient's body weight influences students' treatment decisions and health evaluations within a randomized experiment.Design Between the months of September and December 2007, a convenience sample of 182 dietetics undergraduate students (92% women; mean age 23.1 +/- 5.4 years) from colleges throughout the United States completed online self-report surveys to assess weight bias (using the Fat Phobia Scale). Participants were also randomly assigned to read one of four mock health profiles of patients who varied only by weight-related characteristics (eg, obese or average weight) and sex (male or female), and asked to make judgments about the patient's health status and participation in treatment.Statistical analyses performed To compare group data, multiple analysis of variance was used to test for an effect of the patient's body mass index on participants' health evaluations and their perceptions of patients in each of the four experimental conditions. Correlations were calculated between mean fat phobia scores and perceptions of patients.Results Participants in all conditions expressed a moderate amount of fat phobia (mean=3.7), and students rated obese patients as being less likely to comply with treatment recommendations compared with nonobese patients (P
