The unit of analysis is a vital entity to any research project that shows the areas the researcher in analyzing in his or her study. It can be regarding groups, or individuals or the specific geographic unit (Trochim, 2006). In analyzing the research problem, my unit of analysis will be childhood obesity in which I will examine issues relating to their family’s economic status and environmental factors such as school and neighborhoods.
Variables
There are two types of variables for my social research problem. The first is the Independent Variables (IV) which is to determine what causes obesity and overweight problem among children. These are their family’s economic status or their environment/ location which determine the kind of food they purchase and eat. The other variable is the Dependent Variable (DV) which is weight gain/ obesity among children. Location or the environment is an independent variable that will be nominal/ categorical. The economic status also an independent variable will be ordinal in terms or poor/low economic status, high economic status or the working/middle-class economic status.
The operational definition
The operational definition where the research takes place is my immediate community that I am residing. Also, the operational definition regarding economic status will determine the type and amount of food that one purchases according to their income. For the case, the dependent variable the operational definition for weight gain and obesity are those people in the society with more than forty percent of body fat and more than 40+ pounds of the body fat in excess compared to their suggested weight regarding sex, height, and age.
My hypothesis
An individual’s economic status affects the kind of food that one buys for consumption. Usually, the readily available and junk food is often cheapest while the expensive foods are the healthy ones. However, I also believe that the location/ environment of an individual is a vital aspect that contributes to weight gain and obesity. The direction in the variables relationships is that the location plays a much crucial role than economic status. It is because location determines the ability of individuals to access healthy foods.
For the case of children who attend school, they spend plenty of hours in school, and when the school is not Kean on the kind of foods that students can take such as junk foods and not healthy ones, all children will end up eating the junk foods no matter their family’s economic status. Even those of the low or poor economic status in the United States can buy a meal at $5 value from a fast food restaurant. The same value meal in another country can be a fraction of the portion size of that served in America. Thus, the location is a primary factor that contributes to overeating and obesity since United States restaurants tend to serve large portions of meals more than other developed nations, and this is not a factor that relates to people’s income.
Reference
Trochim, W. (2006). Unit of Analysis. Research methods knowledge base.
Author, Winnie Melda is living in United States. Winnie Melda is part of our authors community.
