An Exploratory Study for Identifying Factors Related to Breakfast in Elementary, Middle and High School Students

Yi, Bo Sook; Yang, Il Sun

Abstract

This study was carried out to identify factors related to breakfasts in elementary, middle and high school students. This study was surveyed by questionnaires and data was analyzed by SPSS program. Exploratory analysis was conducted according to three school student groups (elementary children, middle school students, and high school students). The subjects were 1,886 school students (female 893, male 959) of 51 schools in the nationwide region. The distribution of subjects was elementary school children 544, middle school students 661 and high school students 681. The results are summarized as follows. Only sixty percent of the subjects had breakfast regularly. About one fourth of the subjects had the habit of skipping breakfast or eating it 2~3 times per week. Frequency of having breakfast and reasions of skipping breakfast were significantly different according to school student groups (p < 0.001 respectively). The rate of skipping breakfast was 14.4% in elementary school, 16.1% in middle school, and 25.0% in high school. The main reason for skipping breakfast was "not delicious or poor appetite" in elementary school (42.5%), but "busy" in middle (50.2%) and high school (61.1%). There was no significant difference in frequency of having breakfast according to living areas (rural and urban). There were not significant differences between frequency of having breakfast and BMI and degree of satisfaction on body weight. But there were significant difference in frequency of having breakfast according to economical status (p < 0.05). There were significant differences in degree of school performance according to frequency of having breakfast (p < 0.001). There was significant relationship between the time of attending school and the frequency of having breakfast. But there were significant relationships between frequency of having breakfast and time of rising. These findings suggested that the time of rising was controlled by having enough time that students eat breakfast. And mother (or person who prepares meals) must have more concerns about preparing breakfast for children and students.