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Children 's Parents Promote Healthy Lifestyle Choices Essay

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The purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis which states: children whose parents promote healthy lifestyle choices in the home are less likely to suffer from obesity than those whose parents do not. A hypothesis is defined by Babbie (2013) as “A specified testable expectation about empirical reality that follows from a more general proposition; more generally, an expectation about the nature of things derived from a theory” (p. 33). This thesis will be tested by observing the independent variable which is: the promotion of healthy lifestyle choices by the parents, to see if it has an effect on the dependent variable. That is, an independent variable is assumed to produce the dependent variable which in this case is, the likelihood that a child will not suffer from obesity in a home when healthy lifestyle choices are promoted by the parents. The study will be descriptive in nature. The Office of Research Integrity defines descriptive research as, “A descriptive study is one in which information is collected without changing the environment (i.e., nothing is manipulated). Sometimes these are referred to as ‘correlational’ or ‘observational’ studies” (par. 4). In other words, the researcher observes the process then sets out to describe what was viewed. The main reason for employing a descriptive study in this case is that it allows for the description of a social situation without having to conduct an experiment. Also, authors of descriptive studies often

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