Socioeconomic Factors and Obesity: A Research Plan

The proposed research aims to investigate the complex relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and obesity rates across different demographics. By analyzing existing literature, such as works by Dinsa et al. (2012), Grabner (2012), and Hillier-Brown et al. (2014), this study will explore how SES influences dietary habits, physical activity levels, and access to healthcare resources. The research will propose targeted interventions at individual, community, and societal levels to mitigate socioeconomic inequalities in obesity, particularly among children. Methodologies will include a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative data analysis with qualitative interviews to gain comprehensive insights. The ultimate goal is to inform policy-makers and public health officials on effective strategies to reduce obesity rates by addressing underlying socioeconomic factors.

RESEARCJ PROPOSAL
RESEARCH PROPOSAL FOR GRANT APPLICATION
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

RESEARCH PROPOSAL 1
Contents
Lay description................................................................................................................................4
Aim, Significance and research question.........................................................................................4
Aim..............................................................................................................................................4
Significance.................................................................................................................................5
Research question........................................................................................................................5
Background......................................................................................................................................6
Research plan and methodology (Including ethical consideration).................................................8
Research plan...............................................................................................................................8
Methodology................................................................................................................................9
Data Collection..........................................................................................................................10
Data analysis..............................................................................................................................10
Ethical consideration.................................................................................................................11
References......................................................................................................................................13

RESEARCH PROPOSAL 2
Lay description
According to the reports of Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2017), almost 52 percent
of adults (from18 to 45 years) are not sufficiently active in their lifestyle. More than 60 percent
adults have abnormal lipid content in their blood and 63 percent Australians are overweight.
Upon observing the pattern of obesity and inactive lifestyle, it was observed that there is a
relation of Socio-economic Status (SES) and overweight or obesity in the Australian lifestyle
(Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2017). Therefore, the prime aim of the project is to
determine the ways in which obesity and sedentary lifestyle is related to high or low SES in
younger generation. In this research proposal, the links of obesity to socio-economic status will
be assessed using a population-based study where, the participants will be selected randomly. A
questionnaire related to their daily activity, food habits and level of inactivity will be prepared
and the participants will be encouraged to fill the survey pamphlet. After completion of the
survey, successfully the data will be collected and assessed, which will determine the effect of
higher or lower SES on obesity of target population in Australia (Au, Hauck & Hollingsworth,
2013).
Aim, Significance and research question
Aim
The prime aim of the research is to understand the relation between socio-economic status and
obesity in the context of Australian adults. Under the aim, objectives will be finding a pattern of
obesity in adults. This will include few questions such as; the obesity is due to inactive lifestyle
or unhealthy food habit. People are aware or not about their inactive (less physical activity) or
unhealthy food habit they are living with or not is one of the prime objective of this research.

RESEARCH PROPOSAL 3
Another objective of this research proposal is to find the relation between high socio-economic
status and obesity and low SES and obesity. The pattern acquired from this relation will lead to
disclose the fact due to that obesity occurs in such adults in Australia.
Significance
Obesity is one of the major health issues the current world is facing. Not only Australia, but also
the complete world is looking for interventions that can help these obese people to return to their
normal life and complete daily activities without any hurdle. Obesity in Australian adults has
been increased since, 2014-15 and the age group mostly affected with this syndrome is 18 to 45
which is considered as the younger adults (Karnik & Kanekar, 2012). Any countries
development depends on the activity and urge to change of younger generation. However,
according to Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2017), 63 percent of the young
generation of the Australia is suffering from obesity and overweight. Therefore, the research
regarding the pattern of obesity and its relation to economy is important and significant.
On successful completion, the research will identify the relation between socio-economic status
and obesity, lower and higher SES and its effect on younger generation, the prime reason obesity
is inactive lifestyle, unhealthy diet and negligence to health and so on (Walls et al., 2012).
Research question
Appropriate research questions are very important to find out exact answers. The research
questions for this project are-
 What is the relation between obesity, sedentary lifestyle and Socio-economic
status in younger generation?

RESEARCH PROPOSAL 4
 Is spending a substantial amount of time in sedentary states associated with
obesity for adolescents in low SES groups?
 Do the adolescents from high SES, spending equal time in sedentary behavior
bears equal risk of obesity?
 How SES does influences sedentary behavior among adolescents?
 The population (younger generation) is aware of their unhealthy inactive lifestyle
that is leading to obesity in them or not?
These questions will lead to understand the pattern of obesity occurring due to economic
difference and activity difference amongst population. The research findings will help not only
Australians, but also the entire world, suffering from obesity, as the struggle between SES level
and obesity is not only affecting Australia, but also the entire world. .
Background
There are numerous amount of study has been done to find out the relation between the obesity
and socio-economic status in different parts of the world and few of them are mentioned below.
The World Bank is funding numerous amount of researches that has found facts that can help to
find out the relation between economic status and obesity. However, those researches has several
research gaps, related to the methodology, selection of participants and method of evaluation,
data collection and analysis that decreases the effectiveness of the project. According to Dinsa et
al. (2012), they studies the obesity pattern in low income and middle-income nations and tried to
find out the SES and its effect on obesity. The study uses different SES indicators to relate the
SES to obesity; first SES indicator was wealth and income and second was educational status.
Hence, the outcome depicted different patterns for both these things and resulted in a confusing

RESEARCH PROPOSAL 5
outcome, where wealth SES is related to obesity but the educational level is not. This was the
first research gap of this literature, as the SES level is directly related to obesity.
In another study done by Gibbs and Forste (2014), researchers were to find out the reason of
obesity in the children belonging to low SES society. They carried out surveys in those areas,
where the children were growing up and were getting affected to obesity. The team of the
researchers find out that the both indications of SES that is wealth and income and educational
level is responsible for the obesity in children. From infancy, the children are not breast fed, as
the economic status of the mother was not very good to be able to consume nutritional product.
Hence, the children lack the advantages of breast-feeding and developed obesity in them.
However, the research lacks a proper method to assess the perfect result for the study, such as a
proper data collection method or data interpretation method (Hillier-Brown et al., 2014).
Further, in a study the researchers looked for BMI differences across the state irrespective of
race, gender, creed, ethnicity, age and socio-economic status in the United States of America
(Grabner, 2012). The researchers analyzes micro-level of data and collected them from the three
reputed data centers of the states. They analyzes the data of socio-economic status, both based on
wealth and based on educational level. They estimated the BMI time trends, increase and
decrease trends, distributional shifts and incremental associations with SES. The results they
acquired indicated that women has higher rate of SES-BMI effect on their obesity than men do.
Hence, they identified the relation of obesity and higher or lower SES level. however, the
research gap was still persisting in such researches as the researchers were not focusing on the
fact that affected population is aware of obesity and the reason of it or not. Therefore, this
research also lacked the information about the reason of obesity.

RESEARCH PROPOSAL 6
All these research articles were focused to find out the relation between socio-economic status
and obesity and were destined to find out what are the SES indicators that determine this trend.
This leads to research gap in their project. The prime aim of this research proposal is to find out
the proposed research question within the proposed budget and timeframe. This research will
focus on the assessed research gaps present in the abovementioned research articles and will try
to comply with the proposed research questions. Further, the methodology will be population-
based study where the common Australians will participate in the assessment process. Data
collection and analysis will be simple and effective and from the finding, it will be easier to
interpret the research questions.
Research plan and methodology (Including ethical consideration)
Research plan
The research aim in this case has been decided from the commencement of the project. The
prime aim is to determine the relation between SES and obesity, reason of obesity if the younger
generation is aware of the adverse effects of inactivity and unhealthy lifestyle. These research
aims need specific objectives to find out the reason behind the level of SES affecting the
Australian youth (Kasahara et al., 2014).
The research strategy is to target the younger generation as obesity is affecting their capabilities
to perform and make changes in the benefit of Australia. A specific location will be chosen or an
online survey will be conducted to implement the research strategy and then intervention,
coming out of the survey will be applied to connect to the youth as obesity make people shy,
stressed and alone. Therefore, such youth will be pushed to come out and speak about their
problem and the reason of their condition (Steyerberg et al., 2013). This will let those common

RESEARCH PROPOSAL 7
people understand that obesity is curable and can be cured completely. After that, those young
participants will be made to fill a questionnaire consisting of questions that can clear their level
of inactivity and unhealthy lifestyle. These questionnaires will be distributed to a large section of
young people of every community to understand the SES level of that community. This research
will continue for 6 months and will cover the entire community.
Resources are also important factor to take the research to a number of people so that they
understand the severity of the problem and take part in the process to overcome it. In this case,
the resources chosen are social medial and mass media to explain the population about the
severity of the disorder. Further, those campaigns in social and mass media will appeal the
population in that research area to take part in the research intervention. Other resources will be
research camps around the research city or in municipal corporation offices to carry out surveys
and interviews (Punch, 2013).
Methodology
A quantitative method has been chosen to find out the proposed research questions, for the
proposed research proposal. Quantitative methodology find out the results using interventions in
which quantity determines the success or failure of it (Cohen, Manion & Morrison, 2013). The
quantitative method that has been chosen for the research is a population based approach
including surveys and questionnaire to talk to as much as survivor to find out a concise data. The
surveys of this process will consist 10 to 15 closed ended questions that the participants will be
answering. Their answer will be with minimum bias and truthful, as they will not be informed
about the process.

RESEARCH PROPOSAL 8
Data Collection
This intervention will continue for 5 months. The first month of the research will be completely
dedicated to advertisements, recruitment and publicity of the research as the research needed as
many people to come out from different SES level and take part in the process. After wards, the
five month after the planning phase will be dedicated to implementation and intervention for the
research project. A health expert to understand their knowledge about obesity and its effect on
health will interview the participants coming out of their house and speaking about the health
problem. the data collection will be done by recruiting people for collecting data. The expert will
also try to figure out the reason for the participant’s inactiveness in daily life. After the patient
fills the survey form, the data will be collected and will be stored according to the locality. the
question will be based on participants lifestyle, their food and diet habit, activities and their
knowledge about health and wellbeing.
Data analysis
The collected data will be assessed depending on the location from which they have been
collected. Further, the data will be arranged according to their location at first. Then the response
to each closed ended question will be collected simultaneously to understand the average
response to that question. This same procedure will be followed for the entire survey set so that
the average trend for that research question can be obtained.
Ethical consideration
Researchers differ widely on ethical issue during research procedure. The difference is about the
dos and don’ts of research study and hence, ethical consideration become important in case of
research proposals. Ethics apply at each step of the research study such as taking consent,
applying methods that does not harm any individual. The prime reason to uphold the research

RESEARCH PROPOSAL 9
ethics while continuing with some research is just because of Goodwill and Trust (Ritchie et al.,
2013). Goodwill of the individual participants, who contribute in the research procedure and
volunteer to find out the research question with their own behavior, attitude, awareness and
support. Trust is also a factor that let researchers explain the entire research to the participants so
that they can participate freely in the research. Hence, these ethical values need to be present in
both the stakeholders of a successful research (Harriss & Atkinson, 2013).
In this research proposal as well, ethical consideration has been prioritized as the participants
deserves every right to know what they will go through and what process the researchers will be
following to get their answers. The researchers will take of different ethical considerations such
as- consent, privacy and confidentiality, deception, protection from harm, data protection,
affiliation and conflicts of interest. These ethical sections will help to complete an independent
and concise research; consequences of violating research will lead to punishments from the
government and the research license will be ceased (Lehnert, Park & Singh, 2015).
The first priority of this research will be asking about the consent from the participants, as it is
the most important step before any population based research project. After that, the researchers
will undertake a training session of the participants so that they understand about the research
procedure and methodology. To carry out an unbiased and effective survey, experienced
healthcare professionals will be hired. Therefore, this will be the ethical consideration for the
proposed research article.

RESEARCH PROPOSAL 10
References
Au, N., Hauck, K., & Hollingsworth, B. (2013). The relationship between smoking, quitting
smoking and obesity in Australia: a seemingly unrelated probit approach. Applied
Economics, 45(16), 2191-2199.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. (2017). Overview. Australian Institute of Health and
Welfare. Retrieved from https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports-statistics/behaviours-risk-
factors/overweight-obesity/overview
Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2013). Research methods in education. Routledge.
https://books.google.co.in/books?
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+significance&ots=SOBTFmxbsq&sig=vfuf0uvCRwtBepFAW__3FQWN5es#v=onepa
ge&q=research%20methodology%20and%20its%20significance&f=false
Dinsa, G. D., Goryakin, Y., Fumagalli, E., & Suhrcke, M. (2012). Obesity and socioeconomic
status in developing countries: a systematic review. Obesity reviews, 13(11), 1067-1079.
Gibbs, B. G., & Forste, R. (2014). Socioeconomic status, infant feeding practices and early
childhood obesity. Pediatric obesity, 9(2), 135-146.
Grabner, M. (2012). BMI trends, socioeconomic status, and the choice of dataset. Obesity
facts, 5(1), 112-126.
Harriss, D. J., & Atkinson, G. (2013). Ethical standards in sport and exercise science research:
2014 update·. International Journal of Sports Medicine, 34(12), 1025-1028.

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Hillier-Brown, F. C., Bambra, C. L., Cairns, J. M., Kasim, A., Moore, H. J., & Summerbell, C.
D. (2014). A systematic review of the effectiveness of individual, community and
societal level interventions at reducing socioeconomic inequalities in obesity amongst
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Karnik, S., & Kanekar, A. (2012). Childhood obesity: a global public health crisis. International
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Lehnert, K., Park, Y. H., & Singh, N. (2015). Research note and review of the empirical ethical
decision-making literature: Boundary conditions and extensions. Journal of Business
Ethics, 129(1), 195-219.
Punch, K. F. (2013). Introduction to social research: Quantitative and qualitative approaches.
Sage.
Ritchie, J., Lewis, J., Nicholls, C. M., & Ormston, R. (Eds.). (2013). Qualitative research
practice: A guide for social science students and researchers. Sage.
Steyerberg, E. W., Moons, K. G., van der Windt, D. A., Hayden, J. A., Perel, P., Schroter, S., ...
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