University of Illinois at Chicago, Institute for Health Research and Policy, 1747 West Roosevelt Road, M/C 275, Chicago, Illinois 60608, USA.
Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act. 2008 Dec 10;5:64. doi: 10.1186/1479-5868-5-64.
Recognizing the growing childhood overweight problem, a number of school-based strategies, including policy approaches, have been proposed and are being implemented to address the problem considering the amount of time children spend in schools. This paper describes the results of a pilot study that tested approaches to collecting U.S. school district policy information regarding physical education and nutrition requirements that can inform efforts by policy makers, researchers, advocates and others interested in collecting school district-level obesity-related policies that are typically not systematically available from a "one stop" source.
Sixty local school districts representing six states were selected for conducting the district policy research, with larger, urban school districts over-sampled to facilitate collection of policies from districts representing a larger proportion of the public school population in each study state. The six states within which the pilot districts were located were chosen based on the variability in their physical education and school-based nutrition policy and geographic and demographic diversity. Web research and a mail canvass of the study districts was conducted between January and May 2006 to obtain all relevant policies. An additional field collection effort was conducted in a sample of districts located in three study states to test the extent to which field collection would yield additional information.
Policies were obtained from 40 (67%) of the 60 districts, with policies retrieved via both Web and mail canvass methods in 16 (27%) of the districts, and were confirmed to not exist in 10 (17%) of the districts. Policies were more likely to be retrieved from larger, urban districts, whereas the smallest districts had no policies available on the Web. In no instances were exactly the same policies retrieved from the two sources. Physical education policies were slightly more prevalent than nutrition policies.
Collection of U.S. local school district policies requires a multi-pronged approach. Web research and mail canvasses will likely yield different types of policy information. Given the variance in district-level Web site presence, researchers and others interested in obtaining district physical education and nutrition-related policies should consider supplementing Web research with more direct methods.
鉴于儿童超重问题日益严重，许多以学校为基础的策略，包括政策方法，已经被提出并正在实施，以解决这个问题，因为儿童在学校的时间很多。本文描述了一项试点研究的结果，该研究测试了收集美国学区政策信息的方法，这些信息涉及体育教育和营养要求，可以为政策制定者、研究人员、倡导者和其他有兴趣收集通常无法从“一站式”来源系统获得的与学区肥胖相关政策的人提供信息。
选择了代表六个州的 60 个地方学区进行学区政策研究，对较大的城市学区进行了超额抽样，以便从每个研究州的公立学校人口中比例较大的学区收集政策。试点学区所在的六个州是根据其体育教育和学校营养政策以及地理和人口多样性的差异选择的。2006 年 1 月至 5 月期间，进行了网络研究和对研究学区的邮件调查，以获取所有相关政策。在三个研究州的一个样本学区进行了额外的实地收集工作，以测试实地收集是否会产生更多信息。
从 60 个学区中获得了 40 个（67%）的政策，其中 16 个（27%）学区通过网络和邮件调查获得了政策，10 个（17%）学区确认不存在政策。较大的城市学区更有可能获得政策，而最小的学区在网络上没有政策。在任何情况下，都没有从两个来源检索到完全相同的政策。体育教育政策比营养政策略为普遍。
收集美国地方学区政策需要采取多管齐下的方法。网络研究和邮件调查可能会产生不同类型的政策信息。考虑到学区层面网站存在的差异，有兴趣获取学区体育教育和营养相关政策的研究人员和其他人应该考虑将网络研究与更直接的方法相结合。
