Research Proposal: School Closure due to COVID-19 and

the Effect on Childhood Obesity Issues.

Jason Liang

Los Angeles Pacific University

PUBH 620 Research Methods (010) FA2 2020

Dr. Carter

12/25/2020
Contents
Research Proposal: School Closure due to COVID-19 and the Effect on Childhood Obesity Issues. 3
Broad Topic Area 3
Literature Review 3
Background/Gap 3
Theoretical Foundation 3
Themes in the Literature 4
Target Population 5
Problem Statement 6
Research Questions 6
Sample and Location 6
Hypothesis/Variables 6
Methodology & Design 7
Purpose Statement 7
Data Collection Approach 7
Data Analysis Approach 8
Discussion of Research Implications and Future Direction 9
References 11
Research Proposal: School Closure due to COVID-19 and the Effect on
Childhood Obesity Issues.

Broad Topic Area

Childhood obesity has been a serious issue that causes many negative health impacts to the

children. Many students rely on school to provide help with healthy food choices and

opportunity for physical activities that help combat obesity issues. However, the school

shutdown during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States hindered the effort to use school

as a platform to counter the childhood obesity issue.

Literature Review

Background/Gap

COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted on how the people in the United States

function their daily lives. School closure was one of the safety measures that many places

decided to implement in order to protect people from the virus. However, there are many

hidden consequences to the children with school closure. (Petretto et al., 2020).

School-centered mitigations such as healthy food intake have been shown to have an

important role to reduce the prevalence of childhood obesity. Parents adjust their eating

habit based on the information they learned from their children (Ayadi, 2008).
Theoretical Foundation

School offers more than just academic purposes. It also offers different non-academic

support for the students and their families (Edley et al, 2019). Schools provide health

care, mental health care, meal supplement programs, and opportunity for physical

activities (Hoffman, et al. 2020).

Childhood obesity in the United States still remains one of the goals in Health People

2020 campaigns since 2004 (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2020).

School-based intervention to prevent childhood obesity with interactive activities and

homeworks can create parental involvement, which will increase the effectiveness of the

program to reduce childhood obesity (Kipping et al, 2012).

Ayadi supports the approach that focuses on parents' involvement to modify their eating

habits by utilizing a learning mechanism called “reverse socialization”, where the

information the children learned to be transferred to the parents (2008).

Themes in the Literature

Obesity and those morbidities resulting from measures implemented to prevent

COVID-19 spread and limit its mortality would, ironically, make the individuals more

vulnerable to COVID-19 (Sanchis-Gomar et al, 2020).

A study shows that the pattern of obesity in students increases during summer break but

decreases when they are back to school (von Hippel & Workman, 2016), which provides

proof of the importance of school’s role in students' life.

School promotes physical activity and food with high nutritional value while preventing

student consumption of high sugar and high fat food at school (Cohen & Schwartz,

2020). There are many policies such as the “National School Lunch Program and School

Breakfast Program” from the Federal and States government that are in place to support

the effort (USDA, n.d.).

School closure can increase the risk of weight gain because of family issues, lack of

opposites for physical activity, and easy access to unhealthy foods at home (Lee, Kubik,

& Fulkerson, 2019). Furthermore, the children had to stay home without school and will

more likely spend more time on their phone, computers, and television. Increased screen

time can also make people more likely to consume energy-dense food (The Lancet Public

Health, 2020).

Lockdown can also affect metabolic health and promote obesity and other diseases, the

future policy needs to be implemented to counter the obesity-related effect from the

measure agant COVID-19 (Clemmensen et al, 2020). The safety measure to prevent

COVID-10 spread may result in obesity and make the individual more vulnerable for

COVID-19 (Sanchis-Gomar et al, 2020).

It is recommended to implement approaches to counter the missing of the healthy habit

on the day to day life where school provides. And people start to see how school plays an

important role for students and their family’s needs during the COVID-19 pandemic with

school closure. It provides a window of opportunity to address and improve the additional

service that school provides (Hoffman & Miller, 2020.

 Target Population

The target population is children and adolescents in the United State from age of 2 to 18

where they normally would attend kindergartens or primary schools. It is especially

important to focus on the areas where the lockdown or prolonged school closure.

Problem Statement

School centered mitigations have been commonly used to help with childhood obesity issues in

the U.S. There is lack of data to understand the impact on the prolonged school closures due to

COVID-19 pandemic with students’ weight.

Research Questions

How have eating habits changed due to school closures affecting students and their weight?

Does school closure due to Covid-19 pandemic affect students and their eating habits

contributing to negative impacts on childhood obesity issues?

Sample and Location

The targeted population would be students from the school district that experienced prolonged

closure or distance learning. The age of the student should be focused on in grade schools.

The required sample size for Orange County, California is 384, where there are 473,612 enrolled

students in 2019-2020 (Ed-Data, n.d.) with Confidence Level: 95%, Confidence Interval: 5%.
The samples should have balanced representation for students coming from different

demographics and socio-economic levels. And in order to achieve a proper degree of

presentation, the target sample size might need to be increased.

Hypothesis/Variables

Predictor Variable: Time that students had to stay home due to school closure.

Criterion Variable: Students’ weight change.

H0: The time that students had to stay home due to school closure has no effect on students’

weight.

H1: The time that students had to stay home due to school closure increased students’ weight.

Methodology & Design

The research to learn the effect from the problem statement. A quantitative study method where

data collection form students from different schools that repcention the general population will

be implemented.

Purpose Statement

This research uses the quantitative method that aimed to determine the connection between the

prolonged school closure and its effect on childhood obesity. School centered intervention

approaches played an important role to prevent childhood obesity. The research can be used as
further proof that school does not only provide academic activities but also non-academic

support to the students and their family’s overall wellbeing.

Data Collection Approach

The minimal sample size for this study is 384. There are 612 public schools in Orange County

(2020, California Department of Education) and there are 28 school districts (n.d., Orange

County Department of Education). The data collection process should be distrtubed by the

population by school districts while trying to get samples from different demographics.

The survey questions will be for both online surveys that are sent to students and also ask

schools and teachers to partner with in order to include data from students that lack internet

access.

Data Analysis Approach

The sample size for this research is still considered small. However, the quantitative data can still

provide a good based idea if school closure causes negative impact on childhood obesity as

predicted.

The demographic of the will be required in order to understand the how location, age, gender,

ethnicity, race, family income, and family education level contribute to the students' weights as

they stay at home.

The data of the level of the healthy food the students eat, the consumption of snacks and junk

food, and the level of physical activities would be analyzed to determine the correlation between
the weight changed from before school closure and at after approximately six months of school

closure.

The data points are then plotted into graphs to make the data easier to understand and show a

better picture of how the factors contributing to the weight changes. The trend of the relationship

between each factor can act as a starting point for future research to a more in depth study of the

relationship between particular factors and weight.

Discussion of Research Implications and Future Direction

The goal of the research is to get a better understanding if the prolonged school closure will

affect the children’s weight. There are many factors that contribute to the obesity issue and

school has been at the center of intervention plan to combat the obesity issue. The research will

help us gain valuable understanding about the long term effect if the school centered intervention

stopped. This research can help provide a glance of the effect as there has not been a case where

long term school closure has taken place.

However, this research has limited sample size and it can only provide a brief picture of the

problem. With the sample size of 384, it does not even provide one participle for each school. On

the other hand, the many survey questions would be using a ranking questionnaire where the

participants answer based on their own discernment without a unified standard. Therefore, the

data can be not as trustworthy as desired. Another limitation is that at the time of survey, the

school closure would have been for roughly 6 months. Each school and different types of schools

has implemented different methods to continue student involvement with school. Some of them
include physical activities as part of the distance learning process, which can also play a role in

the weight control.

The future studies from this research can go from many different directions. One of the methods

would be have partiplant check in with exercise, food consumption, and weight on a regular

basis and see if there is a correlation between students staying at home or going to school.

Another approach would be to get the data from schools after the schools are back to full

capacity where most of the students' weight would become accessible from the proper channel.

Then study the changes from the last school year where schools were in normal functions.
References

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COVID-19. Clinical practice and epidemiology in mental health : CP & EMH, 16, 189–191.

https://doi.org/10.2174/1745017902016010189

Ayadi, K. (2008). The role of school in reducing the prevalence of child obesity. YOUNG

CONSUMERS, 3, 170.

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/17473610810901606/full/html

Edley, C., Jr., Koenig, J., Nielsen, N., Citro, C., National Academies, N. A. of S., National

Academies, N. A. of E., & National Academies, N. A. of M. (2019). Monitoring Educational

Equity. Consensus Study Report. National Academies Press.)

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Kipping, R. R., Jago, R., & Lawlor, D. A. (2012). Developing parent involvement in a

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