Leadership as Life Skills in Relation to Health Behaviours and Bodyweight in Grade 5 Students

• Author / Creator

  Ferland, Adam R

• Childhood obesity has risen dramatically over recent decades in Canada, attributed largely to increasingly obesogenic environments. Our understanding of obesity now recognizes its complex ecological etiology, yet life skills – critical to how children engage with their surroundings – have been overlooked. The provincially representative 2012 REAL Kids Alberta survey of grade 5 students and their parents included novel questions assessing leadership skills of students according to the 7 habits model of The Leader in Me, which aligns well with life skills.
  This thesis investigates the validity of these leadership questions, and the associations between leadership, as a model of life skills, and children’s health behaviours – diet quality, physical activity, and sleep duration – and bodyweight status. Results indicate that leadership is strongly associated with diet quality and physical activity in children, and should be a priority for understanding and addressing the obesity epidemic and the health of children.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Children
  • Overweight
  • Life skills
  • Obesity
  • Leadership

• Graduation date

  Fall 2013

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3T98F

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.