Childhood Obesity among Puerto Rican Children: Discrepancies Between Child’s and Parent’s Perception of Weight Status

Winna T. Rivera-Soto and Linnette Rodríguez-Figueroa
Additional contact information
Winna T. Rivera-Soto: Department of Human Development, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Puerto Rico, Medical Science Campus, San Juan, PR 00936-5067, Puerto Rico
Linnette Rodríguez-Figueroa: Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Puerto Rico, Medical Science Campus, San Juan, PR 00936-5067, Puerto Rico

IJERPH, 2012, vol. 9, issue 4, 1-11

Abstract: Public concern about childhood obesity and associated health problems calls for the identification of modifiable factors that could halt this epidemic. Parental perceptions of their children’s weight status could be associated to how parents influence children’s eating patterns. We aimed to identify the perceptions Puerto Rican parents have of their children’s weight and children’s own perceptions of weight status as compared to real weight. A cross sectional survey was performed in a representative sample of 1st–6th grade students. Only half of the children correctly identified their weight, and only 62.4% of the parents correctly classified their children’s weight. Most obese/overweight children did not perceive themselves as such. Almost half of obese/overweight children were identified by the parents as normal weight while over half of the underweight children were perceived by their parents at normal weight. More girls than boys perceived themselves as obese/overweight and more parents of girls than of boys perceived them as such. Higher-educated parents were better at recognizing overweight/obesity among their children compared to less-educated parents. This study suggests an influence of parents’ SES characteristics on their perceptions of children’s weight status as well as on children’s own perceptions of their weight status.

Keywords: Puerto Rican childhood obesity; parental perception; children perception (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/9/4/1427/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/9/4/1427/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:9:y:2012:i:4:p:1427-1437:d:17205

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().