British and Iranian parents’ and children’s awareness of the child’s weight status, physical activity, sedentary behaviours and fundamental movement skills: A mixed methods approach

Childhood obesity (CO) is an epidemic issue in developed and developing countries (e.g. UK as developed and Iran as developing country) which needs to be addressed. Parents’/children’s awareness of weight status and health behaviours of the child are considered an initial step to prevent and mange CO. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to examine and explain parents’ and children’s awareness of the child’s weight status, Physical Activity (PA), Sedentary Behaviour (SB) and Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS) among normal weight and overweight children, in two different countries (i.e. Uk and Iran) with high rate of CO through a mixed method approach. Adopting a sequential explanatory design, this research is conducted in two consecutive phases, including three quantitative studies (using questionnaires) in phase one, following by qualitative study (using interview) in phase two to explain findings of quantitative studies. It should be noted that the studies in this thesis were conducted prior to the covid-19 pandemic. The sample in the three quantitative studies (studies 1-3) consisted of 217 children (aged 8-10 years); 98 British and 119 Iranian as well as their parents. To assess actual weight status, Body Mass Index (BMI) percentile was measured and children were categorised as normal weight (N=71 British & 74 Iranian, if BMI <85th percentile) and overweight (N=27 British & 45 Iranian, if BMI ≥85th percentile). PA, SB (GeneActive accelerometers) and Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS) (Test of Gross Motor Development–2) of children were objectively measured. Verbal and visual tools were applied to assess weight status perception. Questionnaires were used for assessing PA, SB and FMS perception. Results of quantitative studies found that many overweight children and their parents in both countries underestimated the child’s weight status verbally and visually, while British parents and children had lower accuracy than Iranian. In both weight groups Iranian parents, their children and British children overestimated the child’s PA level while British parents accurately perceived it. Iranian children’s overestimation of PA was more than British children. In addition, British parents and their children as well as Iranian normal weight children underestimated the child’s SB while Iranian overweight children were aware of their SB. Iranian parents overestimated SB of their children. Concerning FMS, in both countries parents of normal weight children were aware of the FMS levels of children whereas parents of overweight children and all children themselves were not aware of that. Comparing the two countries in study 3, British overweight children had higher levels of overestimation than Iranian overweight children. The qualitative study (study 4) used semi-structured, face-to-face interviews with 40 parents (20 in each country) who had an 8-10 year old child and were fluent in their respective native languages (English and Farsi). Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed thematically. Results of the qualitative study showed that in both countries parents felt responsible for CO and un/healthy behaviours of children, however Iranian parents, attributed the responsibility also to school and government as well. British parents placed less responsibility on these organisations. ‘Denial’ was suggested as a parental reaction to CO, and low activity levels and poor FMS of children which may impact parents’ awareness. There were a variety of reasons for denial but denial to avoid the social stigma attached to CO was raised mainly among Iranian parents while denial due to normalisation of obesity as well as to deflecting parental responsibility was raised more by British parents. While denial of high SB leading to underestimation was discussed by British parents, overestimation of SB was also discussed by Iranian parents as a strategy to encourage children to be more active, to avoid labelling their child as ‘hyperactive’ and also to persuade schools and government to promote PA of children. Nonchalant and positive attitudes towards CO and the notion that children will grow out of it was another parental reaction to CO discussed by parents in both countries. These factors were suggested by parents as potential reasons for parents’ misperception of their child’s weight. Time, cost, convenience, parents’ lack of knowledge (on all aspects of obesity, nutrition, PA, SB and FMS) child’s preference and weight as well as peer pressure were proposed by parents as barriers to behaviour change. Overall, the results of the studies in this thesis showed that parents’ lack of awareness of CO, PA, SB and FMS of children is a critical issue for managing and treating CO and promoting healthy behaviours of children. In this regard, it was also found parents face various barriers that they need to be supported to overcome them suggesting that increasing awareness alone might not be sufficient. CO prevention and management is a shared responsibility that needs a multi-disciplinary multisector approach. In addition, the results of the studies in this thesis showed that to improve efficacy of intervention programs they need to be tailored to countries/cultures

THE WELFARE STATE AND THE MARKET ECONOMY: THE AMERICAN AND GERMAN EXPERIENCES OF SOCIAL POLICY

This paper reviews the recent development of the welfare state and social policy in the United States and Germany. The empirical study is primarily based on the comparative study of the trends of the “social wage” and the “net social wage” in the two countries over the last two decades. The paper addresses two major questions. The first question is whether the expansion of social expenditures has posed any drag on capital accumulation and economic growth in these two countries. The second question is whether the increasing ideological challenges from the right and the competitive pressures of globalization have led to retrenchment of the American and German welfare states in the recent decades

Optimal Budget Allocation in Social Networks: Quality or Seeding

In this paper, we study a strategic model of marketing and product consumption in social networks. We consider two competing firms in a market providing two substitutable products with preset qualities. Agents choose their consumptions following a myopic best response dynamics which results in a local, linear update for the consumptions. At some point in time, firms receive a limited budget which they can use to trigger a larger consumption of their products in the network. Firms have to decide between marginally improving the quality of their products and giving free offers to a chosen set of agents in the network in order to better facilitate spreading their products. We derive a simple threshold rule for the optimal allocation of the budget and describe the resulting Nash equilibrium. It is shown that the optimal allocation of the budget depends on the entire distribution of centralities in the network, quality of products and the model parameters. In particular, we show that in a graph with a higher number of agents with centralities above a certain threshold, firms spend more budget on seeding in the optimal allocation. Furthermore, if seeding budget is nonzero for a balanced graph, it will also be nonzero for any other graph, and if seeding budget is zero for a star graph, it will be zero for any other graph too. We also show that firms allocate more budget to quality improvement when their qualities are close, in order to distance themselves from the rival firm. However, as the gap between qualities widens, competition in qualities becomes less effective and firms spend more budget on seeding.Comment: 7 page

Nontrivial t-Designs over Finite Fields Exist for All t

A $t$-$(n,k,\lambda)$ design over \F_q is a collection of $k$-dimensional subspaces of \F_q^n, called blocks, such that each $t$-dimensional subspace of \F_q^n is contained in exactly $\lambda$ blocks. Such $t$-designs over \F_q are the $q$-analogs of conventional combinatorial designs. Nontrivial $t$-$(n,k,\lambda)$ designs over \F_q are currently known to exist only for $t \leq 3$. Herein, we prove that simple (meaning, without repeated blocks) nontrivial $t$-$(n,k,\lambda)$ designs over \F_q exist for all $t$ and $q$, provided that $k > 12t$ and $n$ is sufficiently large. This may be regarded as a $q$-analog of the celebrated Teirlinck theorem for combinatorial designs