Health-Related Quality Of Life in a Clinical Sample
According to the article, there were three main objectives of conducting the research study. The first objective was to take measurements of health-related quality of life in a clinical sample of mixed ethnic obese adolescents and children. The second objective was to make comparisons of health-related quality of life between samples from obese participants and control samples. The final objective was to make comparisons in health-related quality of life in obese adolescents and children depending on their pubertal status (Riazi, Shakoor, Dundas, Eiser and McKenzie, 2010).
The main research question is to find out whether there is a link between the weight status and the total health-related quality of life in adolescents and children. There are three main hypotheses that were formulated on the basis of previous research studies results. The first hypothesis is that worse health-related quality of life score reports would be obtained for obese adolescents and children compared to those of their healthy participants grouped according to ethnic, gender and age. The second hypothesis was that Better reports would be obtained for obese prepubescent children compared to those of obese post-pubertal and pubertal children. The final hypothesis was that higher BMI scores would be linked to more decrease in health-related quality of life scores within the obese participants. This type of study is quantitative type of study since it involves extrapolation of quantitative data in form of scores (Riazi, et al, 2010).
One operational dependent variable that has been used is the health-related quality of life, which was obtained using a scale comprising of 23 items surrounded by four key domains namely emotional functioning, physical functioning, school functioning and social functioning. Other dependent variables that were used include the height, which was obtained to the nearest one millimeter and weight, which was obtained to the nearest 0.1 kilograms. Demographic variables were also used and these included the ethnicity, age, weight, gender and the body mass index (Riazi, et al, 2010).There are some additional variables that the researcher ought to have examined. One variable is the lifestyle of participants, which affects the progression and extent of obesity in children and adolescents. Health status is the other variable that researchers should have taken into account since there are several health complications that alleviate obesity in children. Finally, researchers should have taken into account the diet of the participants. One important relationship that the study sought to investigate is the link between obesity and the extent of psychological functioning. According to the results obtained, obese individuals are more likely to experience decreased psychological activity or functioning.
Contrary to the hypothesis formulated and stating that there is an association between higher BMI scores and health-related quality of life scores, the results obtained in the study indicated that there was no such relationship. This implies that interventions should focus on all children affected with obesity and not only to those with severe cases of obesity. Moreover, the results indicated that the impact of obesity was independent of the gender and ethnicity of the affected subjects. The authors concluded that the study was a perfect demonstration of there being a lower health-related score in clinical samples of mixed ethic children compared to samples from the control group (Riazi, et al, 2010).
Reference
Riazi, A., Shakoor, S., Dundas, I., Eiser, C., & McKenzie, S. A. (2010). Health-related quality of life in a clinical sample of obese children and adolescents. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes 8(134)
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