Effectiveness of Healthy Lifestyle Programme to Prevent Obesity in UK Children

This research analyses the effectiveness of a healthy lifestyle programme in preventing obesity among children in the UK. Two articles are compared using qualitative and quantitative research methods. The first article is based on a randomized controlled trial while the second article is based on a meta-synthesis. Validity and reliability of the research methods are discussed.

Introduction to research and
evidence based practice

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................4
Explaining qualitative and quantitative research with its characteristics....................................5
Introduction of two articles..........................................................................................................6
Comparison of two journal articles and their research methods and approaches........................7
Validity and reliability.................................................................................................................9
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
Recommendation.......................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................12

Topic: To discuss effectiveness of healthy lifestyle programme in order to prevent obesity
among children. Study on UK
INTRODUCTION
Healthy lifestyle programme is programme that has been made in schools for the
prevention of the obesity which is developed by teachers, families and health care professionals.
Living a healthy lifestyle is considered to be very important because it helps in the prevention of
the chronic diseases that can lead to long term illness. It allows feeling good about yourself and
taking care of personal health and maintaining the self-esteem and self-image. This is said to be
the factor that is considered to be very effective for maintaining the healthy lifestyle by doing the
right things for the body. In childhood the condition of obesity is considered to be significant
overweight for his or her age and height. Childhood obesity can also lead to diabetes and high
blood pressure along with increased cholesterol. The biggest issue of childhood obesity is that
there are no symptoms other than weight that is just above normal. It has been recognized that
the entire family’s diet and exercise habits is he major way of controlling obesity amongst
children. As per the National Child Measurement Programme in UK obesity prevalence among
four and five year old have found 9.9% in 2019 and 14.4% in 2020-21. In kids that are 10 to 11
the obesity prevalence shows an increase in 4.5% which is at 25.5% in 2021.
This research is about how effective the healthy lifestyle programme is going to be on
controlling the obesity in children of UK. For this the research is going to analyse two different
articles that are going to help the research in important consideration. This research would use
the qualitative measures for being able to analyse the factors that are going to be taken under
consideration for healthy lifestyle programme’s success. From this research the individuals is
going to be able to take effective care and understanding for the management of the obesity. It is

considered to be very important for schools of UK to be able take measures for improving their
programme and also increasing the operations regarding the ways in which they provide the
success that is required. For the study and concept of health this research is very important as it
talks about the most common disease of the 21st century and its impact on the children which are
the future of our generation. For the society understanding the reasons due to which the children
are achieving a state of obesity is very important. It is important because obesity in adults is very
common and for some people it is something they get when they are young. From such
analysation it has been found that the level of development that is required for the businesses is
considered to be the factor that can give the growth that is responsive for the management of
their operations. The use of appropriate research strategies is going to be very effective part of
the development in the study for obesity in children.
MAIN BODY
Explaining qualitative and quantitative research with its characteristics
Qualitative Research: The qualitative research used to involve the collecting and
analysing of the non- numerical data in order to understand the best concepts, opinions and
experiences. This can be used when the theoretical aspects and facts are needed to be considered.
By this it helps the to generate new ideas while having research in the wide market. This type of
research can be used in the humanities and the other subjects where there is use of theoretical
aspects. It helps to know about the various approaches and facts which were unknown to the
researcher while conducting the research (Farghaly, 2018). The aim of this purpose is to enable
the researcher in order to insights that what person feels about and understand about their
experiences. By this there is deeper understanding about the things which makes the research
more successful. The characteristics of the qualitative research is as described below:
11 Provide wide context: While choosing this research technique it helps to provide
large amount of information that are basically non- numerical. By getting the
wider context it make the research more successful.11 Multiple methods: the researcher use the different types of qualitative methods
that includes interviews, observations and other documents that helps to produce
the single data.11 Participants meaning: In this entire research process the qualitative research helps
to keep focus on the learning of the participants by knowing about the issue.

Quantitative research: The qualitative research is defined as the process that helps to
collect and analyse the best numerical data to have better research. This can be used by using the
set patterns, predictions and generalize the outcomes to the large population. Further it can also
be stated to collect the information from the potential customers by having surveys, online polls
and questionnaires (Voss, 2021). The results or outcomes that is depicted is in the form of
numerical data. The aim of this research is to attain the better knowledge and have better
understanding about the market. This type of research used to produce the objective of the data
that helps to have better understanding by using the statistics and numbers. The characteristics is
as described below:
Introduction of two articles
ARTICLE 1: Effectiveness of the Healthy Lifestyles Programme (HeLP) to prevent obesity in
UK primary school children: a cluster randomised controlled trial.
This article is about the childhood and how obesity is causing increasing problems in
substantially worldwide in the past three-decade evidence that exist for effective preventing
strategies. In this study the main aim is to establish whether a school based intervention for the
children aged 9-10 year can prevent excessive weight gain at this age. For this research a
pragmatic cluster randomised control trial of healthy lifestyle programme has been chosen for
the prevention of obesity. Different schools have been selected randomly for this research for
studying their proportion of children that are eligible for the free school meals (Kobes and et.al.,
2018). It is considered to be the key factor that is able to deliver the physical activities that
workshops education sessions and their delivery is going to be done by the teachers with short
homework tasks and drama sessions. From this research the findings have been able to develop
that 32 eligible schools with 1324 children were recruited and it was found that 1244 children
had baseline BMI. Hence, this study was able to find there are adverse effects of bad eating
habits on children and the obesity is more dependent on the activity behaviours. Without the
theoretical information and extensive piloted intervention, it was achieving that there is high
level of engagement from the children in this study. Schools are considered to be the ideal setting
for the delivering the population with an intervention as it targets them when they can learn the
most.

ARTICLE 2 Interventions aimed at preventing and reducing overweight/obesity among children
and adolescents: a meta-synthesis.
This is the study in which the aim was to prevent and reduce the overweight children and
adolescents with the help of meta synthesis process (Lloyd and et.al., 2018). For which the
prevalence of obesity that has been a major problem worldwide in children and adolescent. The
number of youth which is considered to be overweight from increase of numerous intervention
has been seen to be the focus on improving the children weight status. This study focus on the
growing body research and wright related intervention for youth that has been summary for
different meta-analysis that has aimed to provide an overview of the effectiveness of
intervention. For tackling of this problem in this research the meta synthesis has informed
conclusion about the state of effectiveness of interventions targeting child and adolescent
overweight. In this study different moderator analysis has shown the caparison between the
obesity treatment interventions. This shows that the obesity treatment intervention is
significantly more effective in the reduction of body mass index than obesity prevention
intervention. This study has also said that the child and adolescent obesity has taken a pandemic
form. This means that it is occurring and developing in countries and for boys and girls. Increase
in the body weight has also been associated with the negative outcome for the youth’s physical,
social and mental health.
Comparison of two journal articles and their research methods and approaches
The first article is about Healthy Lifestyles Programme (HeLP) to prevent obesity in UK
primary-school children: a cluster randomized controlled trial. In this article the aim was to
establish a school based intervention for children of the age 9-10 for preventing the excessive
weight gain after 24 months. In comparison to this the Article 2 is based on Interventions aimed
at preventing and reducing overweight/obesity among children and adolescents through a meta-
synthesis. This article utilizes a metasynthesis that is a form of systematic review and integration
of findings from qualitative studies. This is the form of an emerging technique of medical
research which is used for many different methods.
In the first article the method that has been utilized is based on a pragmatic cluster for
controlled trail of the healthy lifestyle programme. It is school based obesity that is prevention
intervention for the school in southwest UK. For this study the school were assigned with the

computer generated sequence to either support or control stratified by 5-year-old kinds and the
portion of children eligible for free school meals. The focus of this study was to deliver help to
the children with including dynamic and interactive activities of physical practice for the
education session delivered by the teachers with short homework tasks, drama sessions and
getting goals to modify behaviour. In the 2nd article the two phased research strategy has been
carried out by the author. This includes the survey of literature that is conducted through
assembling suitable terms. Secondly this research is going to systematically search all the
relevant database regarding the study. This is then going to be interpreted with the meta-analyses
of obesity and prevention/treatment intervention are going to be created. In this research various
key term combination are used such as the additional eligible meta-analysis that is going to
identify the reference section of the found data.
In this research the trail manager was said to be responsible for recruiting schools via
Devon Association of Primary School Heads and local primary school learning community
meetings. The allocation of the school in this study is going to be randomly done for developing
a significance of computer generated sequence. In this research the randomisation was done by
statistician in the UK clinical research collaboration registered Peninsula Clinical Trials Unit
immediately after all schools had been recruited. For the 2nd article the extraction of data is based
on the participants, intervention, comparison, outcome and context method was used to extract
necessary information from meta-analyses in a standardized manner. The methodology quality of
this research included meta-analysis that was for assessing of systematic review of intervention
that emphasized on quality of meta-analysis. The selection of the data has been done in this
research with the help of researcher’s personal skills and knowledge and understanding of the
topic.
For the 1st article the statistical analysation is going to use the calculation of assumed a
mean of 35 children with the age of 9-10 year per school. In this analysation statistical tests such
as coefficient of variance and infraclass correlation has been used for this study. These tools are
able to detect the difference between the groups BMI SDS at 24 months. All these types of
comparative analysis allowed the study for clustering of children within schools using a
likelihood based random effects regression modelling approach which uses data for providing a
valid estimate. From this analysis most of the data were of continuous nature and are liner model
were fitted with the weight status was analysed using the random effects ordinal logistic

regression model with three categories, underweight or healthy weight, overweight, and obese. In
the article number two the data files are compiled, which contained all information extracted
from the meta analysis. This has also been entailed that the information about the publication
year focus and types of intervention is considered to be including other conditions. This is also
the European intervention that is going to target certain specific behaviours regarding the
participants. The analytical process has been described as the conduction of the meta-synthesis as
the approach that is based on the assumption the study would need to focus on analysation of the
overall approach and effect on the sizes as the report. In this analysation the size was weight as
the inverse form of variance that is going to help in ensuring the overachieving affect from the
metaphor package.
From the results of the article 1 it was found that the risk of childhood obesity is related
to the complex interaction of factors at the individual’s family, school and society levels. This is
said to be the factor that influences the intervention for the development of the mapping that is
based on the evidences. It is said to be the extensively piloted for ensuring acceptability and
feasibility. In this the large school based cluster has been randomized controlled trail which has
shown the high fidelity to intervention delivery and participation of children families. The
evidences from the systematic review is suggested from some school based interventions. We
were able to address the methodology is to focus on the shortcoming that has been identified.
The other studies that addressing of the intervention that included the behaviour can change the
technique believed most likely to affect identified casual pathways. The systematic literature
searches need to yield 457 articles across all the data bases. This is considered to be the
duplication of the publication that is written in language other than English. The results of the
different meta-analysis on the obesity was towards the prevention/ treatment intervention that are
included for the full text reading. It was found that the results also show only single-component
in interventions and eleven meta analyses that includes multicomponent interventions. This is
also said to be the meta-analysis that is placed for the exclusion of restriction on the intervention
that sets into the school environment.
Validity and reliability
The validity of the first article is more than that of the article 2 because the first article is
based on a quantitative study for which is going to take the actual perspective of student under
the consideration for the study of obesity. It can be said that the meta synthesis method utilizes

other existing secondary data that are old and are not able to analyse the actual real results. In
order to maintain the validity aspect of the research in the article 1 the all state-run primary and
junior schools in Devon and Plymouth (UK) with enough pupils for at least one year-5 class
were eligible have been taken for consideration. It has been found that the schools that are
assigned for this study are generated by the computer and is either an intervention or control that
is stratified by the number of year in which the portion of children are considered eligible for the
school meals. The validity of the research in article 2 is also maintain through taking the
information for maintaining the validity aspect of the research. Hence, it has been concerned that
the best integration of the evidences is able to influence the understanding and the experiences of
the results on obesity interventions.
CONCLUSION
From this study it has been evaluated that the obesity has started to take the form of
pandemic in the children and adolescent. This study also elaborates that the intervention to
prevent obesity is more effective than intervention for treating obesity. In this research two
different articles have been analysed for the understanding of the concepts about how the
research is able to understand the factors that are considered responsible. It is able to analyse the
factors that is considered to be reason that is able to influence the changes in the study on
obesity.
Recommendation
Following are the recommendation that can be made for interventions on obesity are,
 The use of meta-analysis synthesis approach has a disadvantage of combination of meta-
analysis in the away that the studies get included with results of some intervention.
Hence, it can be said that utilization of a large scale prevalence is much more effective
than meta synthesis as it fails to cover the large scale information’s.
 The use of better tools of analysation of research is going to be considered as the factor
that can help the prevalence data to be better analysed and interpreted. Software’s like the
SPSS can be a very effective option for its analysation.
 The meta analysis has increased the chances of public bias study due to which the
fetching of the interventions is very important for the meta-analysis for additionally being
assessed as the publication. Hence, primary data is going to be the key factor that would
be able to help the study perform with effectiveness.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Farghaly, A., 2018. Comparing and Contrasting Quantitative and Qualitative Research
Approaches in Education: The Peculiar Situation of Medical Education. Education in
Medicine Journal. 10(1).
Kobes, A.and et.al., 2018. Interventions aimed at preventing and reducing overweight/obesity
among children and adolescents: a meta‐synthesis. Obesity reviews. 19(8). pp.1065-
1079.
Lloyd, J. and et.al., 2018. Effectiveness of the Healthy Lifestyles Programme (HeLP) to prevent
obesity in UK primary-school children: a cluster randomised controlled trial. The Lancet
Child & Adolescent Health. 2(1). pp.35-45.
Moises Jr, C., 2020. Online data collection as adaptation in conducting quantitative and
qualitative research during the COVID-19 pandemic. European Journal of Education
Studies. 7(11).
Voss, B. L., 2021. Documenting cultures of harassment in archaeology: a review and analysis of
quantitative and qualitative research studies. American Antiquity. pp.1-17.
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