Breakfast Habits among Schoolchildren in the City of Uruguaiana, Brazil

This study describes the profiles of school children with regards to their breakfast eating habits. It allows us to approach the possible factors that are involved in omitting breakfast. A reliable adaptation of the questionnaire on eating habits of the school population was conducted.

The questionnaires were applied in a representative sample of the city of Uruguaiana, Brazil. Identifying risk factors of school children will make it possible to develop health educational programs in order to attain better eating behaviors and prevent nutritional disorders. This methodology could also be used to know sedentary practices and some life habit related to health among children from the school population.

The two most important difficulties are achieving a high level of response from the shy population through the questionnaires and obtaining the necessary permits for research in minors. The visualization of the method will allow all the researchers to reproduce the technique in other centers and obtain important data on the eating habits of school children. Begin by creating a draft of the questionnaire using word editing software.

Include different study variables, such as gender, age, family situation or parents'occupation. Variables on breakfast habits include foods in the daily breakfast or classification of breakfast. Send a draft to external experts and ask them to review the translated questionnaire keeping in mind aspects such as item comprehension.

Design a final version of the questionnaire and submit it to a scientific and ethical committee along with a research report of the project. Conduct a cross-sectional descriptive study to characterize the breakfast habits of the school children. Contact the leaderships of all the participating schools to set the date and time for completing the questionnaires.

Inform parents and obtain their informed consent. Children complete questionnaires individually but the consent of their parents is essential because they are minors. When the students are ready to complete the questionnaire, have the teacher ask for silence in the classroom.

Ask the students to be honest with their answers and select only one option for each question. Each student should complete their questionnaire individually. Allow them 15 minutes to complete it approximately one minute per question.

Analyze the data with a statistical analysis program. Manually convert all written data to a database in a spreadsheet format. Open the database in this statistical program and analyze all parameters completed by the students.

Perform the Descriptive Analysis by calculating the frequency distributions of the main qualitative variables, as well as the measurements of central tendency and dispersion of the quantitative variables. Perform hypothesis contrast by using the Chi Square Test then perform the student's T test if necessary. The questionnaire was administered in 12 school centers.

A total of 470 children participated in the study. The mean age of the children was 9.8 years old. 54%were girls and 46%were boys.

The main socio-demographic results of the sample are summarized here. Variables linked to breakfast are summarized in this table. Out of all participants, 24%had not eaten breakfast on the day they completed the questionnaire.

When the children were asked, how often they have breakfast with either parent 49.3%said every day, 6.4%said four to six days a week, 14.7%said one to three days a week, 11.1%said less than once per week and 14.2%never had breakfast with either parent. When asked how many days per week they have breakfast, 18%of the school children reported having breakfast every day. Another 18%said five to six days a week, 6.9%said one to four days a week and 51.8%stated that they did not have breakfast on any days of the week.

No statistically significant difference was observed between having had breakfast and gender or with co-living situation. No correlations were observed with whether or not the father or mother worked or with the type of work they did. However, a significant relationship was found between the frequency of having breakfast with their father or mother and having had breakfast on the day of testing.

The most important parts of this protocol are designed in the final version of questionnaire and conducting our reliability analysis to analyze it's consistency and reproducibility at two different moments. There are diverse socio-demographic parameters which haven't shown statistical significance with the breakfast habit. This motivate us to conduct new studies including variables to explore the reason for omitting breakfast.

Analyzing children's breakfast habits allow us to research their diet and eating patterns. This study expands the variables related to quality of the diet.