Friendships and Risk of Over-weight among Diverse-origin Adolescents

不同来源青少年的友谊和超重风险

• 批准号: 7661075
• 负责人: Solveig Argeseanu Cunningham
• 金额: $ 16.43万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-07-20 至 2011-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7661075
• 关键词: Address; Adolescence; Adolescent; Adopted; Adult; Affect; Age; American; Attention; Attitude; Behavior; Body Weight Changes; Characteristics; Child; Child health care; Childhood; Chronic Disease; Coitus; Data; Data Analyses; Data Collection; Data Set; Development; Drug usage; Ethnic Origin; Ethnic group; Etiology; Exclusion; Family; Frequencies; Friends; Friendships; Gender; Health; Health behavior; Height; Heterogeneity; Home environment; Immigrant; Individual; Intervention; Interview; Life; Link; Literature; Logistic Regressions; Longitudinal Studies; Longitudinal Surveys; Maintenance; Measures; Mental Health; Methods; Minority Groups; Neighborhoods; Non obese; Non-Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus; Obesity; Overweight; Pathway interactions; Patient Self-Report; Pattern; Pattern Formation; Peer Group; Perception; Physical activity; Policy Research; Prevalence; Public Health; Race; Records; Reporting; Research; Research Personnel; Respondent; Risk; Sample Size; Sampling; School-Age Population; Schools; Selection Bias; Shapes; Social Environment; Social Network; Students; Surveys; Time; Victimization; Weight; Weight maintenance regimen; Youth; base; behavior change; boys; depression; design; early onset; expectation; experience; girls; high school; improved; indexing; innovation; member; obesity in children; obesity risk; peer; peer influence; prevent; psychologic; public health relevance; racial and ethnic; respiratory; sedentary; self esteem; social; social implication; trait

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Increases in childhood obesity are a public health concern worldwide. In the U.S., 17.6 percent of adolescents have high BMIs for their age. Obesity early in life is associated with poorer physical and mental health and social wellbeing, including respiratory problems, early onset of type 2 diabetes, depression, and social exclusion, and with adult obesity and increased risk of chronic disease later in life. This study explores a potentially important influence on obesity risks in adolescence that has not received sufficient attention in the literature: friendships. OBJECTIVES: Focusing on adolescents, the proposed research will: 1) determine how weight relates to friendship formation; 2) explore the relationship between weight and the strength of their friendship in terms of closeness and duration; and 3) examine whether friends influence weight-related behaviors, weight change in each other over time, and mechanisms through which this influence takes place. An additional innovative approach of this application is to consider how the relationship between weight status and friendships differs between youths by gender, race/ethnicity, and immigrant status. DESIGN: This project will perform secondary data analyses using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), a nationally representative longitudinal survey of adolescents. The unique design of Add Health allows researchers to link respondents' records with those of their schoolmates so that the trajectories of weight and health behaviors of both can be considered within their family, school, and neighborhood contexts -an advantage over most studies, which rely on respondents' claims about their friends. Another advantage is the longitudinal collection of data, which allows us to follow adolescents over time. METHODS: The study develops a conceptual framework for understanding the relationships between friendships and weight status. Survey-adjusted multivariate linear and logistic regressions will be used to assess the importance of weight status for adolescents' friendship in high school. Respondent records are linked to examine differences in friendship reciprocation by weight status and to explore the patterns of influence between friends' weights and health behavior in high school and 7 years later. To the extent possible, researchers will employ longitudinal analyses and instrumental variables to correct biases of unobserved heterogeneity and reverse causality, to distinguish between homophily and influence, and to isolate pathways of causality. SIGNIFICANCE: Understanding the relationships between the social environment and obesity risks can inform research and interventions about the social aspects of health behavior and the potential for tapping social networks to improve health and healthy behaviors in young people. If weight is an important factor in the creation of friendships and friends engage in weight-related behaviors together, interventions that recognize and make use of these relationships may be more successful at bringing about behavior change. No study to date has provided such a comprehensive picture of adolescent obesity at the national level. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The prevalence of obesity among children poses a challenge to develop interventions that promote healthy body proportions and healthy behaviors, and understanding the influences of friendships is important for developing these interventions. The proposed study will further current understanding of the ways in which adolescents' obesity risks and friendships are intertwined. Our findings will inform research and policy about: (a) the extent to which children's health behavior and weight are shaped by friendships; and (b) the importance of incorporating friends and peers into interventions to prevent and reverse obesity among American youths.

描述（由申请人提供）：儿童肥胖症的增加是一个全球性的公共卫生问题。在美国，17.6%的青少年具有与其年龄相当的高BMI。生命早期的肥胖与较差的身心健康和社会福祉有关，包括呼吸问题，2型糖尿病的早期发作，抑郁症和社会排斥，并与成年肥胖和以后患慢性病的风险增加有关。这项研究探讨了一个潜在的重要影响，在青少年肥胖的风险，并没有得到足够的关注，在文献中：友谊。目的：以青少年为重点，拟议的研究将：1）确定体重与友谊形成的关系; 2）从亲密程度和持续时间方面探索体重与友谊强度之间的关系; 3）研究朋友是否影响与体重有关的行为，随着时间的推移彼此的体重变化，以及这种影响发生的机制。该应用程序的另一个创新方法是考虑体重状况和友谊之间的关系如何在性别，种族/民族和移民身份的青年之间存在差异。产品设计：该项目将使用国家青少年健康纵向研究（Add Health）进行二级数据分析，这是一项具有全国代表性的青少年纵向调查。Add Health的独特设计允许研究人员将受访者的记录与他们的同学联系起来，以便在他们的家庭，学校和社区环境中考虑两者的体重和健康行为轨迹-这是大多数研究的优势，这些研究依赖于受访者对他们朋友的说法。另一个优势是纵向收集数据，这使我们能够随着时间的推移跟踪青少年。方法：本研究发展了一个概念框架，以了解友谊和体重状况之间的关系。调查调整的多元线性和逻辑回归将用于评估体重状况对高中青少年友谊的重要性。受访者的记录相关联，以检查的差异，友谊回报的体重状况，并探讨模式之间的影响，朋友的体重和健康行为，在高中和7年后。在可能的范围内，研究人员将采用纵向分析和工具变量来纠正未观察到的异质性和反向因果关系的偏差，区分同质性和影响，并隔离因果关系的途径。重要性：了解社会环境和肥胖风险之间的关系可以为健康行为的社会方面以及挖掘社交网络以改善年轻人健康和健康行为的潜力的研究和干预提供信息。如果体重是建立友谊的一个重要因素，并且朋友们一起参与与体重相关的行为，那么认识并利用这些关系的干预措施可能会更成功地改变行为。到目前为止，还没有一项研究在国家一级提供如此全面的青少年肥胖情况。公共卫生相关性：儿童肥胖的流行对制定促进健康身体比例和健康行为的干预措施提出了挑战，了解友谊的影响对于制定这些干预措施非常重要。这项拟议中的研究将进一步了解青少年肥胖风险和友谊交织在一起的方式。我们的研究结果将为以下研究和政策提供信息：（a）儿童的健康行为和体重在多大程度上受到友谊的影响;（B）将朋友和同龄人纳入干预措施以预防和扭转美国青少年肥胖的重要性。