The role of self-control on adolescents' diet and exercise behaviors

描述（由申请人提供）：了解导致个人从事健康或不健康饮食和运动模式的因素是预防肥胖和其他慢性疾病的必要的第一步。我们需要新的方法来理解为什么有些人从事更多促进健康的行为，而另一些人则较少从事这些行为。本申请提出了一个跨学科的项目，使用基于自我控制概念的理论模型，以便更好地理解运动和饮食行为的变化。自我控制模型认为，计划、解决问题和自我监控等方面构成了一组相关的能力，可能有助于健康结果。然而，自我控制模型尚未广泛应用于青少年健康行为的预测，个体自我控制特征如何与环境因素相互作用尚不清楚。本研究建议采用基于学校的方法获取自我控制措施范围的数据，并研究这些措施与体重指数、饮食、身体活动和久坐行为的关系，以及自我控制措施如何与环境因素（社区和学校特征）相互作用。该研究将在社会认知理论的其他构念的背景下检验自我控制的测量。数据将采用基于学校的调查，在纽约大都会地区的多种族初中和高中儿童（7年级，8年级，9年级和10年级）中收集（N = 2000）。公立学校的学生样本中大约有30%的非裔美国人、33%的西班牙裔和24%的非西班牙裔白人儿童。我们将使用分层模型来控制潜在的混杂因素并解释聚类。分析将确定自我控制措施和环境措施与饮食和运动行为的相关性，样本量将允许对这些关系如何因性别和种族而异进行探索性分析。层次模型中的适度分析将检验环境变量与个体特征之间的相互作用。本研究的结果将对自我控制研究在学校或社区预防项目设计中的翻译产生影响。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Understanding the factors that lead individuals to engage in healthy or unhealthy diet and exercise patterns is a necessary first step in the prevention of obesity and other chronic conditions. There is a need for new approaches for understanding why some persons engage in more health-promoting behaviors while others are less engaged in these. This application proposes an interdisciplinary project using a theoretical model based on self-control concepts so as to better understand variation in exercise and diet behaviors. Self-control models posit that aspects such as planning, problem solving, and self-monitoring constitute a set of related abilities that may contribute to health outcomes. However, self-control models have not been extensively applied to prediction of adolescent health behavior, and it is not clear how individual self-control characteristics may interact with environmental factors. This research proposes to use a school-based approach to obtain data on range of self-control measures and study how these measures are associated with body mass index, diet, physical activity and sedentary behavior, and how self-control measures may interact with environmental factors (neighborhood and school characteristics). The research will examine measurements of self-control in the context of other constructs from social cognitive theory. Data will be collected using a school-based survey in a multi-ethnic sample of middle and high school children (7th, 8th, 9 and 10th grades) in the New York Metropolitan area (N = 2,000). The sample of public school students will have approximately 30% African-American, 33% Hispanic, and 24% White non-Hispanic children. We will use hierarchical models to control for potential confounders and account for clustering. Analysis will determine the correlation of self-control measures and environmental measures with diet and exercise behaviors, and the sample size will allow exploratory analyses on how these relations differ by gender and ethnicity. Moderation analyses in hierarchical modeling will test for interaction between environmental variables with individual characteristics. Findings from this research will have implications for the translation of self-control research for the design of prevention programs in school or community settings.