Perceived Body Weight among School-Aged Adolescents in Mongolia

[[abstract]]Background: Weight perception, which refers to the perception of one’s body shape, is an important dimension of body image concern and plays a significant role in related behaviors. Body weight perception helps in understanding and predicting weight control behavior among adolescents. A better understanding of perceived body weight and its relation to risky factors will contribute in designing a better health promotion and wellness education program. The study was done to determine the prevalence of perceived body weight and identify the influencing factors. Methods: Data for this analysis were from the 2010 Mongolia GSHS. The GSHS administered a self-reported questionnaire to a nationally representative sample (N=5328) of 7th-11th grade school children. For this analysis 23 questions were selected from questionnaire, 1 for dependent and 22 for independent variables. Chi-square and bivariate correlations analyses, and multinomial logistic regressions were performed to determine the prevalence and to predict the perception of body weight from associated factors. Results: As a whole, over one third (42.2%) of subjects misclassified their weight status with 20.1% misclassifying themselves as underweight, 21.0% misclassifying as normal weight, 1.1% misclassifying themselves as overweight. In both groups (male and female), students did not perceive their weight correctly. With respect to self-perceived weight status, there more female students in the “overweight” category (84.6%) than male students (15.4%). Also, with respect to weight status by BMI, there are more female students in the “overweight” category (67.6%) than male students (43.3%). Male students perceived their body weight more incorrect than female students. Conclusion: To summarize, gender differences observed in body weight perception. Our study showed that perceived underweight was more likely to occur in boys, whereas perceived overweight was more likely to occur in girls. Moreover, girls were more likely to misperceive themselves as overweight, whereas boys more likely to misperceive themselves as underweight. Subjects who perceive themselves as overweight experienced significantly higher levels of unhealthy behavior than perceived normal or underweight subjects