Analysis of Overweight and Obesity in Men: HBS108 Assignment

This assignment analyzes three research articles focusing on overweight and obesity in men. The first article uses a cross-sectional study design to explore factors influencing healthy eating and physical activity in young men, identifying motivators and barriers. The second article employs semi-structured interviews and self-reports to examine weight management experiences of Baby Boomer men, highlighting the need for tailored interventions. The third article presents a randomized controlled trial evaluating a gender-sensitized weight loss program delivered through football clubs, assessing its effectiveness and validity. The assignment also includes recommendations for future quantitative research, proposing a randomized controlled trial to assess health professionals' recommendations for men at risk of overweight and obesity, incorporating statistical methods like ANOVA to analyze data. The research explores various study designs, data collection methods, and the validity of findings, providing a comprehensive overview of the topic and potential interventions.

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Health Information and Data
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Professor’s Name
City
Date

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Question 1
i)
The study design used in the article is the cross-sectional study is the (Ashton,
Hutchesson, Rollo, Morgan & Collins, 2017). This is because it is an observation of a defined
population at a single point in time. The study design was convenient since it focused on
allowing a broader reach for the target respondents.
ii)
The rationale or the reasons why the researchers conducted the research were to find out
the personal, social and environmental factors which inhibit or facilitate men their attempts to
practice healthy eating and be physically active (Ashton et al., 2017). Also, the research was to
address the critical barriers to healthy eating and physical activity among obese men in Australia.
iii)
The young men from the study were chosen by the purposive or judgment sampling
approach and enlisted via flyers dispensed about the sports clubs, technical colleges and local
university (Ashton et al., 2017). It is frequently utilized by media when consulting the public for
opinions and in qualitative research. Its limitation is that in addition to volunteer bias, it is
susceptible to errors of judgment by the researcher and the findings, while being possibly broad,
will not definitely be representative (Etikan, Musa and Alkassim 2016).
iv)
The researchers in the study measured ‘at risk’ drinking using the Alcohol Dependence
Scale. This measurement scale provides a quantitative index of the severity of alcohol
dependency consistent with the concept of alcohol dependency syndrome (Müller et al., 2015).
v)

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Moreover, in their research they could measure the income of the participants using the
Interval measurement scale. This scale measures variables better than rank order mode of the
ordinal scale measurement (Fernando and Webb 2017). The person gross income was divided
into three groups which are lower (0-299 dollars per week), middle (300-999 dollars per week)
or higher (1000 dollars or more per week) (Ashton et al., 2017).
Question 2
i)
The survey in this article was aimed to analyze the weight management encounters of
Baby Boomer men born amid 1946 and 1964and to utilize the data to develop aimed messages
along with interventions (Wirth, James, Fafard and Ochipa 2014). The knowledge gap in the
study needed the inclusion of more men from distinct racial and socioeconomic cultures to
provide higher breadth and depth to the data since the men in the study were white and highly
educated.
ii)
The data collection methods used was semi-structural interviews and self-reports (Wirth
et al., 2014). The self-reports were used to gather information on height and weight of the
participants and interviews to collect data on the weight management strategies of the
participants and if they previously have undergone any weight management programs (Wirth et
al., 2014).
iii)
From a good sample of 211 men, the final sample size of 20 men was determined after a
survey was conducted on their weight management approaches and preceding involvement in
weight management programs (Wirth et al., 2014). The respondents were queried whether they

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would be pleased to take part in a semi-structured interview and who accepted were cross-
examined on the audio recording processes, and consent was acquired. The final sample size was
determined because when the interviews were carried out, the analyzer identified a point of data
saturation which was of interest hence became the sample size (Wirth et al., 2014).
iv)
Self-reports are the appropriate data collection method for addressing the weight
management encounters of Baby Boomer men (Wirth et al., 2014). This is because it collects
data on height and weight and quickly collects information for cross-sectional surveys and
descriptive studies (Dobranowski, Lloyd, Côté and Balogh 2018).
v)
The proposed qualitative design has a research question: What is the weight loss
programmes which can be developed specifically for men, which could be broadly and
inexpensively implemented throughout Australia? The type of qualitative study design is
Parallel-group randomized controlled trial study design to select participants randomly within the
Newcastle city in Australia. While recruiting the participants, the sampling method used is
judgment sampling as the sample obtained is a representative of other cities in Australia which is
Newcastle city.
The participants are recruited through advertisements using the university media unit and
through work-place based notices and emails and screened via telephone using standardized
protocol for eligibility. Data would be analyzed by coding it into higher and lower order
concepts, delineating the features and dimensions of every idea. The qualitative data analysis
will then be utilized to codify the themes. Diagrams are drawn to indicate the effects amidst each
of the hypothesis and contemplate the original model.

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Question 3
i)
The study design used in the article is the randomized controlled trial (Hunt et al., 2014).
In the hierarchy of evidence, randomized controlled trial rank above observational studies and
below systematic review and meta-analysis study designs.
ii)
The independent variable was weeks, and the primary dependent variable was weight loss
(Hunt et al., 2014). The primary aim of the survey was to spend weeks for the programme to
determine the amount of weight loss in men.
iii)
The intervention in the study was successful since the retention was high at around 90 per
cent and 12 months, mean weight loss in the intervention group was 5.56 kgs and 0.58 kg in the
comparison group. Serious adverse events were reported the intervention group having 5 of them
and 3 in the comparison group (Hunt et al., 2014).
iv)
Based on the randomized controlled trial design, these findings are probable to have an
excellent internal validity. This is because the study was able to avoid confounders, that is, does
not have more than one independent variable (Becker et al., 2016) and participants are recruited
randomly.
v)
External validity was limited. This because the sample is composed of a homogeneous
population of Scottish professional football clubs (Hunt et al., 2014) and the results will not be
generalizable to the average population. Also, the participants are behaving differently especially

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those in the comparison group or those waiting when they know they are in an experimental
study.
Question 4
i)
Obesity in men has been an issue, and the decision to handle the problem is influenced by
personal perception. Programmes for weight management and healthy living through physical
activity and dietary food intake help men to attain substantial changes in weight. Furthermore,
weight loss in men can be achieved if critical barriers such as time, cost, and accessibility of
unhealthy foods along with lack of motivation are addressed.
ii)
To develop a recommendation for future quantitative research project, the
research question is: What are the perceived recommendations for health professionals to men
who are at risk for preventative overweight and obesity? The study design is a randomized
controlled trial. The strength with this design is that the policy officer and the men in the sample
engage in shared decision making, and there is evidence that the men participating have
enhanced knowledge of their condition hence greater adherence to the management programme.
However, this study design is time-consuming and potentially expensive for the policy officer.
Simple random sampling and systematic random sampling are the methods used. Online
surveys were conducted on men where they had to indicate the measurements of their heights
and weight and a sample of 420 men who undertook the survey were divided into 20 groups. The
dependent variable is BMI, and the independent variables are weight and height. BMI scale
measures the BMI by taking weight in kgs and dividing by the height in m2. The height and
weight were measured using digital scales and portable stadiometer (Matos et al., 2018). The

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statistical method that would be important would consist of Analysis of Variance (ANOVA).
Among the 420 men, 17.3 percent were underweight, 64.2 percent were of normal weight and
18.4 percent were obese and the average age of the sample was 62 years.

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Bibliography
Ashton, L.M., Hutchesson, M.J., Rollo, M.E., Morgan, P.J. and Collins, C.E., 2017. Motivators
and barriers to engaging in healthy eating and physical activity: A cross-sectional survey in
young adult men. American journal of men's health, 11(2), pp.330-343.
Becker, S.P., Leopold, D.R., Burns, G.L., Jarrett, M.A., Langberg, J.M., Marshall, S.A.,
McBurnett, K., Waschbusch, D.A. and Willcutt, E.G., 2016. The internal, external, and
diagnostic validity of sluggish cognitive tempo: A meta-analysis and critical review. Journal of
the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 55(3), pp.163-178.
Dobranowski, K., Lloyd, M., Côté, P. and Balogh, R., 2018. The validity of Self‐Reported
Height and Weight to Derive BMI in Adults Participating in Special Olympics. Journal of Policy
and Practice in Intellectual Disabilities, 15(1), pp.12-15.
Etikan, I., Musa, S.A. and Alkassim, R.S., 2016. Comparison of convenience sampling and
purposive sampling. American journal of theoretical and applied statistics, 5(1), pp.1-4.
Fernando, T.L. and Webb, G.I., 2017. SimUSF: an efficient and effective similarity measure that
is invariant to violations of the interval scale assumption. Data mining and knowledge
discovery, 31(1), pp.264-286.
Hunt, K., Wyke, S., Gray, C.M., Anderson, A.S., Brady, A., Bunn, C., Donnan, P.T., Fenwick,
E., Grieve, E., Leishman, J. and Miller, E., 2014. A gender-sensitised weight loss and healthy
living programme for overweight and obese men delivered by Scottish Premier League football
clubs (FFIT): a pragmatic randomised controlled trial. The Lancet, 383(9924), pp.1211-1221.

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Matos, V., Souza, D., Santos, V., Medeiros, Í., Browne, R., Nascimento, P., Marinho, C.,
Serquiz, A., Costa, E. and Fayh, A., 2018. Acute effects of high-intensity interval and moderate-
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trial. Nutrients, 10(7), p.889.
Müller, C.A., Geisel, O., Pelz, P., Higl, V., Krüger, J., Stickel, A., Beck, A., Wernecke, K.D.,
Hellweg, R. and Heinz, A., 2015. High-dose baclofen for the treatment of alcohol dependence
(BACLAD study): a randomized, placebo-controlled trial. European
neuropsychopharmacology, 25(8), pp.1167-1177.
Wirth, C.K., James, D.C., Fafard, M. and Ochipa, K., 2014. Developing weight management
messages and interventions for baby boomer men. American journal of men's health, 8(3),
pp.258-266.