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Childhood Obesity
EC 315
Shane Martin
Spring II 2012

Purpose Statement Childhood obesity is increasing worldwide. Experts estimate that 1 in 5 kids between the ages of 6 and 17 are overweight. That means that as they get older they will be more at risk for diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart related diseases. Things that we used to associate with older people are now affecting younger and younger children. There are many reasons for this rise in obesity and this paper will look at a few of them. My goal is to show a correlation between what children are doing and how it affects their chances of being obese. My data comes from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website. They sent a survey to schools in all …show more content…

This influences what foods are chosen for the meal. Fast food, takeout, quick microwave meals, etc. are the basic foods a lot of children are getting on a daily basis. The kids diet contains a lot of fat, salt, and sugar, but very few vitamins and whole, natural foods. The final data point I looked at was sugary drinks consumed at school (%SUGAR). This survey question looked at middle/high schools that offered sugary drinks. The data point consists of the percentage of schools that responded that they offered sugary drinks. These could come from the cafeteria or a vending machine. While sugary drinks alone are not a big factor, they are usually consumed along with other unhealthy items.

Data Description The data that I am using comes from the Centers for Disease Control. Every two years they send a questionnaire to schools in all 50 states. These schools then gave the questionnaires to students to fill out. Completed surveys are sent back to the CDC to be tallied. The data is then published on their website. Unfortunately, not every state sends the surveys back, or asks all the available questions. This causes some gaps in the data. For the purposes of this assignment, I excluded any state that did not have a complete set of data. This left 35 states to use for regression analysis.

Presentation and Interpretation of Results
The regression equation is:
OBESITY = 3.457 + .095 %PHYSICAL - .02 %FRUIT + .273 %FAMILY

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