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The purpose of this research is to explore the weight-control behavior of the obese pupils and the related factors of obesity from both individual¢s and family¢s perspectives. The self-developed questionnaire¢s were used to investigate 287 children whose weight-length index are equal or over 1.2. Meanwhile, the children¢s parents are also included in this study. The samples are randomly selected from six different elementary schools, located at Shi-Lin and Pei-Tou District in Taipei city. The results of the study are concluded as follow: 1.The sex ratio of the sample is 1.02:1, and the children subjects are mostly the youngest child at home. Among the children, 56.1% of the surveyed samples are light degree of over-weight.Most of the parents are high school graduated. 59.6% children¢s father are running business, and more than half of them are over weight. However, nearly half of the mothers show normally weight. More than half of the families like snacks and don¢t have enough exercise. 2.Ninty-seven percents of obese children follow weight-control behavior, especialy avoid to eat fried food. The surveyed samples also show lack of constant exercise and 26.8% of obese children are never or seldom doing exercise. The factors related to are children¢s degree of obesity, mother''s education level, family structure, social and economic status, parent''s concerns and attitude towrad child''s weight, family support, and parent''s supervision behavior. 3.On the family support aspect, “The family member would remind me to eat less greasy food" gets the highest mark, and "The family member would encourage and help me to enroll a weight-control class or activity" gets the lowest mark. The factors affecting obese children''s feeling of family support are seniority order, degree of obesity, education level of parent, number of child, family structure, social and economic status, parent''s attitude and concerns toward child''s weight. 4.In general, the parent''s supervision behavior scores is rather low. The parent''s education level above college, mother with lighter or normal weight, family with less children, family with higher social and economic status, parent with more concerns to children, family education with both more democratic style and dictatorial style, and family with more communication between children and parent do get higher marks. 5.The results of stepwise multiple regression analysis show that family support, parent''s supervision, degree of obesity,mother''s education level, and parent''s concerns to child''s weight are the most influential factors. It contributes about 35.0% of the total variances. In conclusion, the school nurses should be able to particularly enhance their functions and roles, as well as aggressively cooperate with other staff at school in order to provide the greatest support and supervision for the obese children. Therefore, the school can act as a bridge in helping parents and children to have better communication and coordination of the weight-control behavior.
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