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Published on: February 2, 2017
Weight misperception and health risk behaviors in youth: the 2011 US YRBS
Yongwen Jiang1, Marga Kempner2, Eric B Loucks2
1Center for Health Data and Analysis, Rhode Island Department of Health, Providence, RI, USA. yongwen.jiang@health.ri.gov.
Objectives:
To evaluate dose-response associations between misperceived weight and 32 health risk behaviors in a nationally representative sample of US adolescents.
Methods:
Participants included 13,864 US high school students in the 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Comparing the degree of agreement between perceived and reported actual weight, weight misperception was determined as 5 categories. Multivariable-adjusted logistic regression analyses evaluated associations of weight misperception with 32 health risk behaviors.
Results:
Both underestimated and overestimated weight were statistically significantly associated with all 32 health risk behaviors in a dose-response manner after adjustment for age, sex and race/ethnicity, where greater weight misperception was associated with higher engagement in health risk behaviors.
Conclusions:
Understanding potential impacts of weight misperception on health risk behaviors could improve interventions that encourage healthy weight perception and attainment for adolescents.
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