Research Article Dimensional Model for Estimating Factors influencing Childhood Obesity: Path Analysis Based Modeling

Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Themain objective of this study is to identify and develop a comprehensivemodel which estimates and evaluates the overall relations among the factors that lead to weight gain in children by using structural equation modeling. The proposed models in this study explore the connection among the socioeconomic status of the family, parental feeding practice, and physical activity. Six structural models were tested to identify the direct and indirect relationship between the socioeconomic status and parental feeding practice general level of physical activity, andweight status of children. Finally, a comprehensivemodelwas devised to showhow these factors relate to each other as well as to the body mass index (BMI) of the children simultaneously. Concerning the methodology of the current study, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was applied to reveal the hidden (secondary) effect of socioeconomic factors on feeding practice and ultimately on theweight status of the children and also to determine the degree ofmodel fit.The comprehensive structuralmodel tested in this study suggested that there are significant direct and indirect relationships among variables of interest. Moreover, the results suggest that parental feeding practice and physical activity are mediators in the structural model. 1