SL0701 Research Plan Introduction The ...

SL0701 Research Plan
Introduction
The research question that we have chosen to study is “how obesity affects one’s self-esteem”. The aim of the study is to try to follow on from previous research that has been done and try to add more knowledge to our understanding of the topic. We hypothesise that people who suffer from obesity are more likely to have low self-esteem and hopefully this will be borne out by the results of our study. In the past, many studies have been carried out focussing on very similar ideas and the link between these two factors has proved difficult to pin down with any great certainty (Wardle, J & Cooke, L. 1994).
A famous study, was by Strauss in 1999 which showed that obese children were far more likely to suffer from low self-esteem, loneliness and sadness. With this in mind the test will hopefully demonstrate obesity can lead to low self-esteem. This led to us becoming interested in the idea of trying out an experiment for ourselves to see if we agreed with their findings, and also whether we could give some fresh ideas to further our knowledge in the field.
This would hopefully allow us to get a better understanding of how significant obesity is, as a causal factor, to low self-esteem which is important because we have to accept that a number of factors can contribute to low self-esteem; obesity is by no means the only one. This is backed up by Shell, R. E. 2002, where social factors are shown to affect an individual’s self-esteem by describing how large posters, placed in many different locations, on methods of weight loss can make a person of perceived higher weight, feel “unworthy”.
In this research plan, we will discuss any background reading i.e. research that has already been done on the topic using a literature review to contextualise the importance of our study. We will then outline how our experiment will work in the methods section and finally, we will discuss any possible ethical or safety issues relating to the data collection and conclude our findings.
Literature Review
There are many theories on how obesity may come about in each individual some examples are genetic, eating behaviours, energy expenditure, type of diet followed, and psychological factors. According to Wood, A. P. 2006 in the mid 1990s a hormone called leptin was discovered. Leptin plays a key role in regulating appetite. When eating the production of leptin in the body sends signals to the brain letting each person know when to stop eating. Tests run on lab mice proved that the production of inactive leptin or a lack of leptin caused severe obesity due to the uncontrolled feeding habbits. Although it is very rear to find a person with a lack of leptin, it has been found that obese people have high concentrations of leptin thus showing that these people have become resistant to leptins effects (Considine, R.V.et al.1996). Eating behaviors can differ from person to ...