RESEARCH ARTICLE
Attitudes of Jordanian Adolescent Students Toward Overweight and Obesity
Nesrin N. Abu Baker1, *, Nahla Al-Ali1, Ranyah Al-Ajlouni2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2018Volume: 12
First Page: 15
Last Page: 25
Publisher ID: TONURSJ-12-15
DOI: 10.2174/1874434601812010015
Article History:
Received Date: 25/09/2017Revision Received Date: 04/10/2017
Acceptance Date: 24/12/2017
Electronic publication date: 31/01/2018
Collection year: 2018
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background:
Obesity is a serious public health problem especially among adolescents. Understanding adolescents’ attitudes toward obesity and healthy lifestyle is a crucial step to develop effective health programs to treat and prevent obesity.
Objectives:
To examine the attitudes toward overweight and obesity among Jordanian adolescent students and to identify the components of obesity prevention program that the students perceive as important.
Methods:
A sample of 1000 students in 8th to 10th grades was randomly selected from 16 schools in Irbid, Jordan. A self-reported questionnaire including attitude related questions was used in a descriptive, cross-sectional study.
Results:
Generally, the students expressed positive attitudes toward obesity; which means that their attitudes were consistent with societal norms in terms of health and social functioning (mean= 3.5, SD=0.39). Furthermore, the students expressed positive attitudes toward lifestyle; which means that their attitudes were consistent with healthy behaviors (mean=3.7, SD=0.58). However, boys had significantly more positive attitudes than girls (p=0.04). The prevalence of overweight and obesity was 23.8%, while obese and non-obese students had similar attitudes toward lifestyle and obesity. Finally, around 20% to 30% of students desired a prevention program out of school time shared with their families and friends and involving eating healthy food and getting more exercise.
Conclusion:
More efforts are needed to build effective obesity prevention programs that focus on eating healthy diet and getting more exercise considering gender differences.