Factors Affecting Underweight Risk Conditions among Primary Schoolers in Bang Phli Subdistrict Municipality School, Bang Phli District, Samut Prakan Province

Abstract

This survey research aimed to study 1) underweight risk conditions and 2) the factors affecting underweight risk conditions among primary school in the Bang Phli Subdistrict Municipality school, in the, Bang Phli District, Samut Prakan province, Thailand. The participants were 121 parents of 6-12 year-old, primary school students attending the Bang Phli Subdistrict Municipality school who were systematically random sampled into the study.  The instruments used to collect the data were the Factors Affecting Underweight Risk Conditions Questionnaire which was developed based on concepts from the Department of Health and was content validated by 3 experts. The Index of Item Objective Congruence (IOC) values ranged from 0.50–1.00 among the questions. and the instrument’s reliability was shown to be 0.71. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics, frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations.  The relationships between meal management in schools with underweight risk conditions were analyzed using Spearman’s Rank Correlations and multiple linear regressions to predict how family factors and media advertising affect underweight risk conditions.

The results showed that underweight risk conditions were at a moderate level (  = 3.07, SD = 0.85). and that there was no relationship between meal management in schools and underweight risk conditions (r= -0.10, p-value = .27).   Family factors and social media, however, has a statistically significant affect on the risk of being underweight at p < 0.05(b = 0.536, p<.05) and (b = 0.552, p<.05) respectively.