Introduction/Methods

Introduction

            One of the many challenges that college students face is weight gain.  College weight gain is so prevalent that it has become known as the freshmen fifteen.  This refers to the likeliness that a first-year student in college will put on fifteen pounds by the end of the year.  Weight gain is a big concern for college students, however many of them do not take the appropriate steps to prevent weight gain.  This is an issue because there has been an increased trend in the prevalence of obesity of America.  Obesity has significant health effects on the body, and may even be fatal.  Large weight gain in college can set students on a path towards obesity.  Consequently, it is important for college students to be able to understand why they are gaining weight, and what they can do to prevent it.  Although the freshmen fifteen is a commonly used term, there have been conflicting studies on the validity of this claim.

            N. Mihalopoulos, P. Auinger, and J. Klein (2010) discovered that few students actually gain the whole fifteen pounds, but rather they gain about 2.7 pounds on average (p. 532).  However, this weight gain on average is still more than six times the normal weight put on during a one year period (p. 532).  Clearly, there is an issue of college students putting on too much weight during their first year.  Yet, they failed to research why so many college students put on this much weight.  This study aims to expand on the research done by Mihalopoulos, Auinger, and Klein by examining the factors that freshmen students at the University of Iowa believe has contributed to their weight gain.

Methods

Participants: Those who participated in this study were all freshmen students in their first semester at the University of Iowa in the fall of 2015.  In total, there were twenty students who participated in this study.

Data Sources: Participants were asked to complete a survey online on surveymonkey.com

Procedure: Participants were asked a variety of questions about factors of weight gain, and whether these factors applied to them.  The first question was, “How much weight have you gained since leaving for college?”  The second question was, “What do you think has attributed to your weight gain?”  A list of factors were provided, and participants were asked to select all that they thought applied.  Finally, participants were then asked if the strongly agreed, agreed, disagreed, or strongly disagreed to a series of three statements regarding the health of their diet, food consumption, and exercise.