title: Ecological influences of early childhood obesity: a multilevel analysis.
abstract: This study aims to determine the contributing factors for early childhood overweight/obesity within the contexts of the child's home, school, and community, and to determine how much each of the ecological contexts contributes to childhood overweight/obesity. The framework was developed from Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory. Data for 2,100 children from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort, were used in a series of multilevel modeling analyses. There was significant variation in childhood overweight/obesity by school and community. The majority of variation in childhood overweight/obesity was explained by the child and family factors in addition to school and community factors. Explained variance of childhood overweight/obesity at the school level was 27% and at the community level, 2%. The variance composition at children's family level alone was 71%. Therefore, overweight/obesity prevention efforts should focus primarily on child, family, and school factors and then community factors, to be more effective.
authors.affiliation: University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Nursing (M/C 802), 845 S. Damen Avenue, Chicago, IL 60612-7350, USA. wboonp3@uic.edu
authors.forename: Wannaporn
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Boonpleng
authors.forename: Chang Gi
authors.initials: CG
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: Agatha M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Gallo
authors.forename: Colleen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Corte
authors.forename: Linda
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: McCreary
authors.forename: Martha Dewey
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Bergren
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D009765:Obesity / Q000503:physiopathology*
keywords: community influences; multilevel modeling; national data; school influences; secondary data analysis