Assessing the Effectiveness of the National School Lunch Program Childhood Obesity Essay

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Childhood Obesity: Assessing the Effectiveness of the National School Lunch Program

Assessing the Effectiveness of the National School Lunch Program: Childhood Obesity

Childhood is a serious health concern for policymakers in the United States. It is estimated that currently, one in every five children below the ages of 2 and 19 in America is obese. For this reason, numerous policies have been formulated to help in preventing or minimizing the risk of obesity among children. This study assesses the effectiveness of one such policy -- the National School Lunch Program.

Childhood Obesity: Assessing the Effectiveness of the National School Lunch Program

Childhood obesity has become a serious health concern for parents and policymakers in the U.S. over the last few decades. It is estimated that approximately 12.5 million children between the ages of 2 and 19, which translates to approximately 1 in every five children, is obese (Toro, 2011). These statistics are worrying, particularly because obesity increases the risk of some serious heath complications including cardiovascular diseases and type II diabetes. A 2011 report by Infographics, for instance, showed that 70% of obese children and adolescents in that year suffered some form of cardiovascular risk factor such as high cholesterol and high blood pressure (Toro, 2011). For this reason, the government both at the federal and state level, has formulated a number of key policies geared at reducing the rates of childhood obesity in the country. One of the most prominent programs in this regard is the National School Lunch Program, where children are served with free nutritious and healthy meals as a way of discouraging them from carrying their own packed meals. Studies have, however, shown that most parents still prefer to have their children carry packed lunch. This is perhaps because experts have given conflicting views on whether the free meals served in school are really as healthy as school administrators claim them to be.

The proposed study seeks to assess the effectiveness of the school lunch program as a strategy for curbing childhood obesity. This it does by comparing the obesity levels of participant children and their nonparticipant counterparts to determine whether there are any notable differences. The proposed study is guided by the following research question:

RQ1: are there any observable differences in the obesity levels of children participating in the school lunch program and those that do not?

The corresponding null and alternative hypotheses are:

H0: there are no significant differences in the obesity levels of participants and nonparticipants of the school lunch program

H1: there are observable and significant differences in the obesity levels of participants and nonparticipants of the school lunch program

One-way ANOVA tests will be conducted to determine whether there are any significant differences (in terms of obesity levels) between the two groups. If the differences between the two groups are found to be significant, the null hypothesis will be rejected.

Methods

Five public schools in the State of Ohio, the researcher's home state, will be selected to participate in the study. Twenty pupils (ten who participate in the school lunch program and ten that do not) will be selected from each school (with the administration's) assistant to participate in the study. Participation will be purely voluntary, and although the class teachers will assist in identifying eligible participants, they will be advised not to force or coerce any child to participate if they are unwilling to. Participants will be selected randomly from the list of eligible children presented by the class teachers. Towards this end, the risk of bias will be minimized as all eligible candidates will have an equal chance of getting selected to take part in the study. I Will be responsible for calculating the participating children's BMIs; however, before taking any measurements from the participants identified by the class teachers, I will make it a point to be sure that the child was neither forced nor coerced to participate, and that they chose to participate out of their own free will. For this reason, only older children (sixth to eighth grade and high school) will be eligible to participate. The BMIs for all the 100 participants will be calculated and recorded alongside the option of whether or not they take part in the school lunch program.

Procedures

The research question guiding the study has been stated as:

"Are there any observable differences in the obesity levels of children participating in the school lunch program and those that do not?"

This is a comparative research question seeking to determine i) whether there indeed are any significant differences in the obesity rates of participant and nonparticipant children, and ii) which one of the two groups (if the difference is indeed significant) has higher prevalence rates for overweight and obesity.

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From the research question, it can be deduced that the school lunch program is the independent variable, whereas obesity is the dependent variable. The school lunch program will be defined in terms of the free meal served to children at lunch time in accordance with the Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 -- participants will be categorized as either 1) participants or 2) nonparticipants in the program, which would make the variable a discrete, nominal variable as the numbers 1 and 2 are just category identifiers, with no quantitative significance. Obesity, the dependent variable, on the other hand, will be defined in terms of the Body Mass Index (BMI). BMI is a measure of an individual's weight against their height -- any measure between 26 and 29 is regarded as a healthy BMI, whereas those equal to or in excess of 30 are regarded as obese. There is an infinite number of possible values between any two whole values, say 26 and 27, which makes this a continuous variable, interval variable. Actual BMI values for all the 100 participants will be obtained and recorded alongside.

Results

The data collected will be analyzed using the SPSS software package. The data to be analyzed is presented in two independent categories, implying that either ANOVA or multiple t-tests could be used effectively. Both would help to identify whether the two group means are significantly different from each other (Sukal, 2013). The former was, however, selected because it is more efficient, and will produce more accurate results should the researcher decide to include other grouping effects such as gender, age, or race in the picture. For instance, the researcher will collect data on participants' age, gender, or race -- later on in the study, if they find need to, they may include additional groupings in the study to cover these in a bid to determine their effect on either of the two original variables. If that happens, t-tests will be inefficient and more prone to error given that the probability of type 1 error increases as the number of tests or groupings increases; ANOVA, on the other hand, would be able to tell the difference between multiple means with just one test (Sukal, 2013). The overriding assumption of the study will be that all observations are independent, and that thus, no participant is in more than one group (Levine & Stephan, 2009). Towards this end, we will assume that participants in the lunch program have never carried packed lunch, and nonparticipants have never taken school lunch.

One-way ANOVA tests will be conducted to determine whether the differences between the two groups are significant. The fifty pupils that participate in the school lunch program in their respective schools will be categorized under one group, and the fifty nonparticipants in the other group. ANOVA will calculate five key indices from the information provided -- i) the mean of both groups individually (group mean), ii) the combined mean for the participant and nonparticipant group, iii) the degree to which individual BMI scores deviate from the group mean (within-group variation), iv) the degree to which the group means deviate from the combined mean (between-group variation), and v) the F-value, which is the ratio between indices (iii) and (iv) (Wetcher-Hendricks, 2014). If the ANOVA test yields a significant value, that is P0.05, then the alternative hypothesis is rejected (Wetcher-Hendricks, 2014).

ANOVA only determines whether the differences between group means are significant; however, it does not say where exactly those differences lie (Leach, 2004). In our case, the test would sufficiently indicate that there indeed are significant (or no significant) differences between the two test groups; however, if the results are significant, it would not specify which of the two groups has a higher prevalence rate. To obtain this information, we will need to conduct a post-hoc t-test upon obtaining significant results (Leach, 2004). This would essentially tell us whether the participant group indeed has lower obesity levels than their counterparts who carry packed lunch. If that is found….....

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