Our UW-Eau Claire International Fellowship Research with Chinese Middle Schoolers

Meeting together again ~ face-to-face! After four years of electronic conversation via E-mail regarding Type 2 Diabetes in China, Lee-Ellen and Peggy collaborate to finalize a simple quasi-experimental study design and to create a bi-lingual data collection tool for use with Chinese middle school students.

Armed with background information about the obesity epidemic among Chinese youth, and after securing all necessary permissions, our University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire research team will use a data sheet (see left) with items Chinese Nurse Educator, Peggy Zhou, translated into Mandarin. The data sheet will enable us to investigate middle school student perceptions about their own health.

The questions we ask are simple ones~How much time is spent on the computer? How much consumption of American fast food? How much physical activity? What is your height and weight? And finally: What are your perceptions of your body image?

We will analyze the results by gender and age. We also created a data coding sheet for use with the present instrument.

Because the Chinese obesity epidemic is an affliction of the affluent, we selected one (very affluent) middle school as the focus for our health education and exercise intervention (the Affiliated Middle School) and one (less affluent) middle school which will serve as the control group, receiving education only.

One hundred thirty two 7th grade students (representing 4 classes at the Affiliated Middle School) who self-report relatively high scores (on body weight, fast food consumption, little exercise, and poor body image) will be our target for a brisk 2 day health education and 2 day physical exercise program called 'Group 8'. Group 8 will meet after school on Mondays and Wednesdays.

As participants, all Chinese middle school students will receive T-shirts, water bottles, and pedometers to record their steps as they continue to walk and engage in physical activity (beyond the duration of our program).

Similar to the experimental group, the control group will consist of a large class of 7th grade Chinese youth. However, the control group will receive only a one time lecture from our team about the importance of sensible eating, remaining physically active, and balancing time on the computer with physical activity and exercise.

Using SPSS, we'll compare scores on the data sheet between classes at the Affiliated Middle School~ before and after our exercise + education intervention ~ and before and after the education program with the control group.