ArticleJournal of general internal medicine2015
Size misperception among overweight and obese families.
Article in Journal of general internal medicine, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 28 citations in OpenAlex.
- Factors Influencing Parents' and Children's Misperception of Children's Weight Status: a Systematic Review of Current Research.Current obesity reports · 2019Pooled it
- Body weight perception and body self-esteem in adolescents with overweight or obesity in Costa Rica: challenges for public health policy.Revista panamericana de salud publica = Pan American journal of public health · 2026Article
- Physical activity and sedentary behaviour amongst children with obesity - exploring cross-sectional associations between child and parent.Journal of activity, sedentary and sleep behaviors · 2025Article
- Factors affecting weight management in overweight or obese diabetic patients: the 2018-2021 Korea national health and nutrition examination survey.Physical activity and nutrition · 2024Article
- The Association between BMI and Body Weight Perception among Children in Turkey: A Cross-Sectional Study.Iranian journal of public health · 2023Article
- Body size perception, knowledge about obesity and factors associated with lifestyle change among patients, health care professionals and public health experts.BMC family practice · 2021Article
- The ageing body: contributing attitudinal factors towards perceptual body size estimates in younger and middle-aged women.Archives of women's mental health · 2021Article
- Is social exposure to obesity associated with weight status misperception? Assessing Australians ability to identify overweight and obesity.BMC public health · 2019Article
- Body Image and Body Avoidance Nine Years After Bariatric Surgery and Conventional Weight Loss Treatment.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2019Article
- Visual attention mediates the relationship between body satisfaction and susceptibility to the body size adaptation effect.PloS one · 2018Article
- Overweight but unseen: a review of the underestimation of weight status and a visual normalization theory.Obesity reviews : an official journal of the International Association for the Study of Obesity · 2017Review
- Associations between feeding practices and maternal and child weight among mothers who do and do not correctly identify their child's weight status.Obesity science & practice · 2017Article
- Independent Aftereffects of Fat and Muscle: Implications for neural encoding, body space representation, and body image disturbance.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Body Size Estimation from Early to Middle Childhood: Stability of Underestimation, BMI, and Gender Effects.Frontiers in psychology · 2017Article
- Body size perception and ideal body size in overweight and obese young adult women.Eating and weight disorders : EWD · 2016Article
- Associations Between Anxiety Disorder Diagnoses and Body Mass Index Differ by Age, Sex and Race: A Population Based Study.Clinical practice and epidemiology in mental health : CP & EMH · 2016Article
- Capsule commentary on Paul et al., Size misperception among overweight and obese families.Journal of general internal medicine · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPerception of body size is a key factor driving health behavior. Mothers directly influence children's nutritional and exercise behaviors. Mothers of ethnic minority groups and lower socioeconomic status are less likely to correctly identify young children as overweight or obese. Little evaluation has been done of the inverse--the child's perception of the mother's weight.
objectiveTo determine awareness of weight status among mother-child dyads (n = 506).
designCross-sectional study conducted in an outpatient pediatric dental clinic of Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY.
participantsPrimarily Hispanic (82.2 %) mothers (n = 253), 38.8 ± 7.5 years of age, and children (n = 253), 10.5 ± 1.4 years of age, responding to a questionnaire adapted from the validated Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. MAIN MEASURES: Anthropometric measures-including height, weight, and waist circumference-and awareness of self-size and size of other generation were obtained. KEY
results71.4 % of obese adults and 35.1 % of overweight adults underestimated size, vs. 8.6 % of normal-weight (NW) adults (both p < 0.001). Among overweight and obese children, 86.3 % and 62.3 % underestimated their size, vs. 14.9 % NW children (both p < 0.001). Among mothers with overweight children, 80.0 % underestimated their child's weight, vs. 7.1 % of mothers with NW children (p < 0.001); 23.1 % of mothers with obese children also underestimated their child's weight (p < 0.01). Among children with obese mothers, only 13.0 % correctly classified the adult's size, vs. 76.5 % with NW mothers (p < 0.001). Among obese mothers, 20.8 % classified overweight body size as ideal, vs. 1.2 % among NW mothers (p < 0.001).
conclusionOverweight/obese adults and children frequently underestimate their size. Adults misjudge overweight/obese children as being of normal weight, and children of obese mothers often underestimate the adult's size. Failure to recognize overweight/obesity status among adults and children can lead to prolonged exposure to obesity-related comorbidities.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.