What are the determinants associated with obesity among primary school children?

Running head: RESEARCH PROPOSAL
RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Name of the student:
Module no:

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RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Research question and research statement:
The question statement set for the proposal is “What are the determinants associatedwith
obesity among primary school children aged 5 to 11 years old in London?”
Introduction:
Present day researchers advise healthcare professionals to follow the biopsychosocial
model of care to ensure proper management of chronic ailments of all patients. Considering the
biological, social and psychological determinants of health helps in providing comprehensive
care management of patients ensuring that they live better quality life. With the rising concern of
obesity among children, it has become important for professionals to identify the determinants
that lead to obesity in the children so that they can develop effective interventions that address
such determinants. Determinants can be considered as the factors or the living conditions that
determine the health status of individuals. The proposal would mainly be developed in ways by
which the maximum number of determinants that contribute to weight gain and obesity issues
among children of 5 to 11 years studying in primary school can be ventured and identified. The
specific population on whom the improper health outcome of childhood obesity would be
explored would be the children of London who are within the age cohort of 5 to 11 and they
should be studying in primary schools. The proposal would be incorporating a research question
on one of the most important rising concern of the nation about the increased prevalence of
childhood obesity among the children of the present generation. The research question would be
followed by background of the growing concern of obesity on children and the various
complications that they face when they are affected by the chronic disorders (Walliman 2017).
This would be followed by the methodology section and then ethical considerations that need to

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RESEARCH PROPOSAL
be considered. A short overview of chapters would be given and then a gannt chart would be
provided.
Background and rationale of the study:
The data researched by the London government had found that nearly 40% of the
children in city of London had been found to be overweight and obese and the highest rate of
childhood obesity being prevalent in the areas of greatest deprivation. Further researches
conducted showed in London as a whole, about 23% of Year 6 students were obese. It is a
concerning situation as this rate is higher than in England that accounts for 205 of children
obesity of year 6 students. Close analysis of the different boroughs in London that the change
had been uneven where eight have been seen to have faced improvements with the level of
childhood obesity falling as well as while rest eight of the boroughs there had been an increase in
childhood obesity of more than 3%. Barking and Dagenham had the highest level of childhood
obesity at around 29% with 4% increase in 2010/2011 (Liu et al. 2018). The borough with the
largest increase was seen to be Waltham forest. In the year 2010/2011, about 20% of the Year 6
children were obese but by the year 2015/2016, there has been 6% increase rising to about 26%.
Obesity in childhood can have different long-term negative outcomes on the health of the
children. Children who are obese are seen to become obese adults when they grow up. Obese
adults are seen to be more at risk of having type-2 diabetes and thereby suffer from different
types of health complications like heart disorders and even mental health depressions. Even,
children are often bullied at school, cannot participate in sports and lose their self-confidence in
their lives. They tend to suffer from depression and anxiety that affect their academic progress
and hence hamper the future career aspirations as well (Wood et al. 2016). It had been found

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that negative effects of childhood obesity are not evenly distributed among the different children
in London with more prevalence being found in the children living in the deprived areas. Such
children are also seen to be suffering from high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and increased
risk for impaired glucose tolerance, insulin resistance and type-2 diabetes. Joint problems and
musco-skeletal discomfort are also common.
Therefore, as healthcare professionals working in the public domain, it becomes their
responsibility to prevent the present situation from being one of the national disease burden in
the nation. It is also the responsibility of healthcare professionals to develop health promotion
programs for educating the present generation children, their parents and their teachers about the
various ways they can prevent the occurrence of childhood obesity. For these, it is important for
the healthcare professionals to understand the determinants that contribute to such disorders and
accordingly they would be developing strategies to handle the determinists (Llewellyn et al.
2016). Hence, conducting the research would help in developing extensive knowledge about
contributing determinists to childhood obesity and help in establishment of strategies, programs
and policies for its prevention.
Aims of the study:
The main aim of the study is to explore the different types of determinants that are
associated with childhood obesity among primary school children in London.

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Objectives of the study:
The main objectives of the study are:
 Finding out the various determinants that contribute in development of conditions that
results in occurrence of obesity in primary school children aged 5to 11 years in London.
 To execute the prevalence of obesity among primary school children in the city of
London.
 Assessing the impact of the government strategies about their capacity in tackling
childhood obesity among the different types of primary school children.
While the first two objectives help in directly answering the research question about the
contributing determinants of childhood obesity, the rest of the objectives mainly help in
highlighting the intensity of impact of determinists on health outcomes of children. The last
objective helps in identifying the different initiatives that had been proposed by government to
tackle the disorder.
Methodology:
The research study would be based upon the procedure of secondary researches.
Secondary researches are mainly seen to include a comprehensive collation along with effective
summarization and synthesis of already existing scientific evidences (Wong and Psych 2016).
The methodology should be developed as such that it would be in clear contrast of the primary
research approach. The primary research approaches mainly incorporate data generation while
the secondary research would be taking the help of primary scholarly article for analyzing the

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data (Moher and Altman 2015). The various steps that should be included in the secondary
research on the topic would be as follows:
 Formulating the research question
 Searching for different essential and relevant literature that answers the research question
and objectives
 Effective screening to select the articles for inclusion
 Effective assessment of the quality of the various extracted primary article
 Successfully extract the valuable data sufficing the research aim and objectives (Orcher et
al. 2016)
 Analyzing the data, conducting literature review for answering the question
The research question had been formulated with the help of a specific research framework called
the PEO framework. This is indeed one of the commonly utilized criteria for the framing as well
as defining of the health-domain question of the qualitative nature (Creswell and Creswell 2017).
The framework mainly constitutes of three important parts. These are the (a) population as well
as their problems termed as P, (b) exposure termed as E and (c) outcomes that are termed as
outcomes or themes (O). the framework that would be used in order to carry out the secondary
research would be
P Children of age cohort 5-11, studying in primary
schools
E Different determinants of health
O Childhood obesity
Table 1- PEO components

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The structure of the secondary research would be based on the elaboration of the research
question and should even outline the eligibility criteria that would be considered for selecting
prospective scholarly literature. Extraction of the articles and undertaking a detailed analysis
would be the next steps (Best and Kahn 2016). Four essential electronic databases would be
considered for extraction of the articles like Medline, Pubmed, Cinahl, Google scholar, Cochrane
and the others. The search terms as well as the other hey phrases that would be fed to the
database would be “determinants of childhood obesity”, “factors contributing to childhood
obesity”, “social causes of childhood obesity”, “ vulnerable practices and lifestyle habits and
obesity in children”, “knowledge and skills of parents and children obesity” and many others.
Boolean operators would be utilized for combining the search terms in different ways as this
helps in broadening and narrowing down the various types of extracted hits. The utilization of
the Boolean operator “AND” are found to be helpful in narrowing down any form of researches
and the utilization of the operation “OR” help by broadening the search by the effective
combination of different researches (Carey 2017). These procedures would help in covering the
research question that needs to be explored in a sufficient manner. Effective determination of the
exclusion and the inclusion criteria beforehand is found to be important as it helps in facilitation
of proper articles that would be aligning with the phenomenon under investigation (Alexaiou et
al. 2016).
Table of inclusion and exclusion criteria:
Inclusion criteria Exclusion criteria
The selected articles need to be published in the
English Language
The articles should not be having non-English
language
The articles that should be selected should have No selection of articles that had been published

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RESEARCH PROPOSAL
been published on or after the year of 2008 before2008
Those articles that mainly focus on the
determinants of health that contribute to chances of
development of obesity
Articles that focus on adult obesity even though
referring about determinants cannot be taken.
Only primary research articles would be selected no secondary research journal, manuscripts and
patents and student dissertations would be chosen
Only those articles that are published in the peer-
reviewed journals would be selected
Clinical guidelines as well as manuscripts need to
be avoided
Finally, the most reliable as well as peer-reviewed articles that answer with the research question
and align with the inclusion criteria would be included. Themes would be developed for the
literature review and finally each of the paper should be analyzed to find out the answers of the
question helping to solve the query of the professionals (Neuman 2016).
Primary researches are extensive researches where budget allocation is required for
selecting participants, conducting experiments, collecting data, undertaking analysis and many
others. Secondary researches do not require huge budget allocation and selection of participants
and conducting of experiments as they are based upon critical analysis of already conducted
primary researches by other authors (Walliman 2017). Primary researches are not biased but
secondary researches are biased as it depends upon the researcher about the type of article and
data she might feel like selecting. Moreover, primary researches are more time consuming
whereas secondary researches are not that much time-consuming.

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RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Ethical considerations:
Third, in secondary research analysis, the participants whose details need to be recorded
in the data set are not directly approached regarding their consent when an individual in
undertaking secondary research analysis. The participants in the first primary article had given
their consent but their consent is not taken once again when their data is analyzed by individual
undertaking secondary research analysis. Secondly, the individual undertaking secondary
analysis need to make sure that the researchers who conducted the primary research in the article
had followed correct methods for taking consents from the participants and that Data Protection
act was followed (Hart 2018). This would help the individual undertaking the secondary
researches to not get involved in any form of legal issues. Third, while extracting the data from
the primary articles, care needs to be taken by the individual undertaking the secondary
researches that the anonymity and confidentiality of the participants in the primary research
article is also maintained in the secondary research and that no breaches in privacy and
confidentiality are made (McNabb 2015). Fourth, proper acknowledgement needs to be
provided to the work of the authors of the primary researches following the correct procedures of
referencing so that legal issues with plagiarism do not arise.
The ethical considerations that are needed to be taken while developing the secondary
researches are that data must be re-identified before they are released into the secondary research
paper. Consent of the study subjects need to be reasonably presumed. Outcomes of the analysis
should be done in such ways that it does not allow re-identifying participants. Even utilization of
the data should be done in such ways that it does not cause any form of distress as well as
damage to anyone (Simmonds et al. 2016).

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RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Project Outline:
Chapter 1: the first chapter of the project would be mainly incorporating the introduction session
that would act as the preliminary glimpse about what the student would be reading in the project
paper. This would be followed by the background section and the rationale section where the
importance of the topic in the present-day scenario and its impact on human world would be
discussed in detail.
Chapter 2 and 3: this part of the project would mainly be incorporating the analysis of different
papers and allocating them to specific themes. The themes should be such that they would help
in understanding the determinants which results in increased chances of development of obesity
among the children. Each of the determinants should be discussed in detail and critiqued as well.
This part would be followed by the discussion section where the author would be providing the
summary of the different determinants that had been identified to be the contributing factors for
childhood obesity and how they are associated with the development of the disorder in affected
individuals.
Chapter 4: this part of the project would be mainly describing the main data gathered from the
entire secondary research and would be followed by recommendations. The recommendation
would mainly include what the health department of the government can perform and take
actions for management of the determinants. It would also contain the various responsibilities
that healthcare professionals need to take in the city of London to ensure that the prevalence of
childhood obesity reduces in the nation.
Project timetable:
Timeframe and 1st week (2nd- (5th- (8th- (11th - (17th - (21 24th 25th 26th

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RESEARCH PROPOSAL
allocation of tasks 4th)
week
7th)W
eek
10th)
week
16th)
week
20th)w
eek
th-
23t
h)
wee
k
week week Wee
k
Background 
Selection of huge
number of articles

Excluding those not
satisfying the
answers

Developing of themes
of the papers selected

Critical analysis of
each of the paper

Ensuring all ethics
and codes are met

Preparing the
discussion sessions

Development of
conclusions and
recommendations

Proof- Reading 

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RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Sending First Draft
to Supervisor

Printing, Binding
and Submission

Reflection:
While developing the research proposal, I developed a wide knowledge about the present
condition and its prevalence in the nation of London. It also helped me to learn about the
different steps that are important in selection of the proper papers that satisfy the needs to meet
the research motive. Moreover, previously, I had no idea about the ethical issues that might arise
from secondary researches if ethical considerations are not followed leniently. Hence, it provided
me the scope to learn important ethics required during secondary researches. Moreover, I also
learn ways of developing Gannt chart as I had never done this before. I also developed ideas
about what kind of research procedures are required regarding specific forms of questions. I
learnt that using primary research approach might not help me to gain ideas about the maximum
number of determinants at one go. I had to undertake many experiments, and this would have
resulted in allocation of huge time and huge money. Therefore, secondary research had helped in
meeting the goal of gathering huge information within short time.

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References:
Alexiou, S., Grigorov, I., Ashton, E., Bayliss-Brown, G. and NiCheallachain, C., 2016, April.
How an impact plan can build on the success of your project-from proposal to legacy. In EGU
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Creswell, J.W. and Creswell, J.D., 2017. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed
methods approaches. Sage publications.
Hart, C., 2018. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Research Imagination. Sage.
Liu, D., Mason, A., Marks, L., Davis, H., Hunter, D.J., Jehu, L.M., Smithson, J. and Virsram, S.,
2018. Effects of local authority expenditure on childhood obesity. European journal of public
health, pp.1-6.
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literature. PLoS medicine, 12(9), p.e1001864.
Neuman, W.L., 2016. Understanding research. Pearson.

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