A Study of the Beliefs of Female Students in Pakdasht City about Obese People and the Related Factors

The present study was conducted to investigate the beliefs of girl students in Pakdasht city about obese people and the factors related to it. This cross sectional study was conducted on 350 grade-seven students in Pakdasht city. The data collection tool was a BAOP questionnaire, including demographic information and eight five-choice questions on the beliefs about obesity and obese people. To analyze the data, the SPSS 16 software as well as Chi-Square test and one-way ANOVA were used. The result reported, 141 (40.3%) students disagreed with the sentence "Obesity often occurs as a result of an illness." and 74 ones (21.1%) totally disagreed. Or, asking a question about the eating habits of obese people ("The majority of obese people have bad eating habits that lead to their obesity.") indicated that 73 students (20.9%) totally agreed and 128 ones (36.6%) agreed with the idea. In addition, 15 students (4.2%) totally agreed
with the sentence “Obesity rarely occurs due to the person's lack of will.” The findings of this study showed that high school female students had little knowledge about the causes of obesity.