Obesity Case Study

Study 1:
The study “Change in intake of fruits and vegetables in relation to risk of obesity and weight gain among middle-aged women” by He et al. conducted a cohort studying for 12 years involving female middle-aged nurses. This was a very large, longitudinal study involving 74,063 females that ranged from 38 to 63 years old. The hypothesis of this study was that there should be a correlation between intake of fruits and vegetables and risk of obesity and major weight gain in middle-aged women. The methods of the experiment are as follows: First, there were questionnaires regarding medical history and health practices sent out. That value would be considered the baseline. From this baseline, women with health problems in their history, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, or diabetes, were not included in the study. The total number of women, aged from 30-55 years old, ended up being 74,063. Continuing the experiment, the participants were to report the …show more content…
Two noticeable strengths that make this study stand out right from reading the methods would be the length of the study and the scale. There are not many studies that get managed to be completed because of the time commitment from the participants. The probability of people moving in the timespan of 12 years is fairly high. The long time scale allows for a true cause and effect comparison involving fruit and vegetable intake when looking over a course of several years. The large number of of participants compliments the long longitudinal study by offering a large sample size to look at. With too few people, there might not be a good representation of people everywhere. With so many people used, 74,063 to be exact, the average taken is a fair average due to the fact that the sheer number is so great. It can be a fair assumption that the people in this experiment can reasonably be used to generalize the population of middle-aged female