THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TV VIEWING AND OBESITY OF CHILDREN IN CHINA

Abstract

#5885597529 MAJOR HEALTH ECONOMICS AND HEALTH CARE MANAGEMENT KEY WORDS: TV WATCHING/ OBESITY/ CHILDREN/ CHINA SHUQI LI: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TV VIEWING AND OBESITY OF CHILDREN IN CHINA. THESIS ADVISOR: KANNIKA DAMRONGPLASIT, Ph.D. This research is investigating the effect of TV viewing, socioeconomic-demographic variables and other risk behavioral variables on the obesity of children in China. This study uses the China Health and Nutrition Survey conducted by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC) as the main data source. This research utilized the 2006 cross-sectional data with children aged 7-18 years old to conduct the analysis, as it is the latest complete and available data. After omitting the missing data, the sample comprised 847 children. For data analysis, two methods were employed as follows: (1) Ordinary least square multivariate linear regression to investigate the continuous measures of waist circumference (WC). (2)Binary logit regression to look at two groups of children (normal and obese) based on body mass index (BMI) and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) cutoff value. The explanatory variables included TV watching time, eating habits when watching TV, parent’s involvement when watching TV, age, gender, family income per capita, location, physical activity, length of time in bed, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of the province, mother presently working or not, mother’s BMI, and fast food preference. The results show that children with TV watching time of more than 3 hours per day are more likely to be obese than children watching TV less than 1 hour per day. The children will become less obese as they become older but they tend to have a bigger WC. In all of the research models, males are fatter than females. Children in rural areas and poor areas are less likely to be obese. Children with a TV in the bedroom are more likely to be obese. A fatter mother tends to have fatter children.