Evaluation of the prevalence of obesity and the perception status of parents on their children's body weight among children attended preschool education in Kirklareli

This study was carried out as a descriptive study to determine the prevalence of obesity and the perception status of parents on their children's body weight among children attended preschool education in the center of Kırklareli. The study population consisted of 1179 preschool children whom were among 3-6 years old that were selected from 23 different institute and their parents, between the dates December 2014 and June 2015. The target population was composed of 727 children and their parents. Therefore the sample frame contains the same number of children as the target population. Data was collected by a questionnaire, weight-height measurements, Body Mass Index, verbal and visual perception notification of parents. Evaluation of data was used SPSS 22 statistics programme. In descriptive statistics, median, mean±standard deviation, frequency, and percentage distributions were given. In the comparison between groups, Mann Whitney U test, Pearson's χ2 test, Kendal's tau-c and Kappa analysis was used. Ages of 49.9% of children were among 60-71 months and 52% of them were man. The prevalence of obesity was found 13,8% in children were between 3 and 6 years old. The prevalence of obesity in male was 17,2% and in female was 10,0% . The rate of obesity among children were ≥72 month was higher than the other age groups (p˂0,05). Obesity in parents was a cause for their children obesity. Rate of obesity in children who eats itself and not forced to eat was higher than others (p˂0,05). Definition of their obese children, visual perception of parents was more accurate than their verbal perception.