Lower birth weight babies have worse outcomes, both short-run in terms of one year mortality rates and longer run in terms of educational attainment and earnings. However, recent research has called into question whether birth weight itself is important or whether it simply reflects other hard-to-measure characteristics. By applying within twin…

Adolescence is a period of accelerated growth and change, bridging the complex transition from childhood to adulthood. This period offers adolescents an opportunity to begin planning for their futures and to adopt healthy attitudes about risk behaviors that can continue into adulthood, thus setting the stage for a lifetime of desirable health…

The current society emphasizes physical appearance and physical fitness. Individual's self-esteem has been shown to be linked with physical appearance. Methods: A random sample comprising of 100 male and 100 female (N = 200) adolescents was selected. The subjects were administered the Current Thoughts Scale and the Dieting Beliefs Scale for…

Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, 1998?1999 Kindergarten Cohort, the study examines two research questions: What are the effects of participation in the National School Lunch Program on changes in children?s behavior, test scores, and body weight? Do these effects differ by gender? To address issues of selection, we use…

Background: This study addresses limitations of previous research by examining the prevalence of body image dissatisfaction within two developmental periods: childhood and adolescence. Methods: A sample of 448 boys and 508 girls completed self-report measures of global body image dissatisfaction. Weight and height of all participants were also…

National level data were analyzed to establish the nature of association and the magnitude of contribution of education exposure to variance on measures nutritional well-being across Africa. Height and weight dependent anthropometric measures were used to assess nutritional well-being. Literacy (illiteracy) rates were the measures of educational…

The incidence of twin births in the United States (US) has increased more than 65 per cent since 1980. However, the risk of injury to multiple-birth children is unknown. We sought to compare the risk of injury-related hospitalization and death between multiples and singletons. We conducted a retrospective cohort study using linked birth…

A longitudinal study was used to examine age differences in the role of body mass index (BMI) and sociocultural pressures in predicting changes in body image and strategies to both lose weight and increase muscles among 443 children aged between 8 and 12 years (207 boys, 236 girls) over a 16-month period. The strongest predictors of body image and…

In this paper, the authors present reliability and validity information for the Netherlands (Health Education Project) Physical Activity Questionnaire (NPAQ), a global proxy report of children's everyday activity preferences (Montoye, Kemper, Saris, & Washburn, 1996). In this study, the authors examined the measurement properties of a global…

The feeding habits acquired during childhood and adolescence have important implications on the health state of individuals, and their physical and emotional well-being. According to WHO (1993), one of the most serious problems that young people face is the excessive consumption of certain types of food that are less healthy. On the other side,…

Behavioural sleep problems (childhood insomnias) can cause distress for both parents and children. This paper reports a model describing predictors of high sleep problem scores in a representative population-based random sample survey of non-Aboriginal singleton children born in 1995 and 1996 (1085 girls and 1129 boys) in Western Australia.…

This research examined the effects of three factors (friendship, gender, and topic of teasing) on adolescents' predicted emotional reactions to hypothetical teasing episodes regarding appearance and academic competence. The 8th graders (n = 131) in Study 1 made predictions regarding the negative emotions and humor experienced when teasing occurred…

Significant deviation from normal weight (obesity and underweight) and lack of physical exercise have been identified as three of the most significant global behavioural risks to health. Body mass index (BMI) and levels of physical activity were measured in a sample of 1542 adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) receiving supported…

Men largely are neglected in research on eating disturbances, including research on the eating disorder continuum. This research explored whether the eating disorder continuum provides an accurate representation for men of characteristics related to disturbed eating in women. Results for a sample of 166 men were mixed, offering limited support for…

American children are gaining weight at an alarming rate. Since the 1960s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the percentage of American six- to eleven-year-olds who fall into the CDC's highest weight classification for children has almost quadrupled. Requiring more physical education (PE) seems like a logical…