Institute of Behavioural Sciences, Semmelweis University, Nagyvárad 4, 1089, Budapest, Hungary,
Eat Weight Disord. 2013 Jun;18(2):193-8. doi: 10.1007/s40519-013-0033-z. Epub 2013 May 1.
Prejudice against obese people has been widely confirmed in scientific papers. Therefore, recent studies have increasingly focused on investigating the individual and cultural factors related to attitudes towards obesity. Since there have been no comparative studies involving Gypsy people, our present research aimed at exploring the possible discrepancies in children's attitudes towards obese children between Gypsy and Hungarian cultures. Our survey included 247 children aged 9-16 (108 boys and 139 girls), of which 136 considered themselves Hungarian (55.1 %), while 111 children (44.9 %) claimed themselves as Gypsy. The subjects were asked to rank six male and six female figure drawings according to their preference. Each sequence of figure drawings included a healthy child, an obese child, and four drawings depicted children with disabilities. According to our results, the drawings portraying the healthy child figure were rated most preferable and those portraying the obese child figure the least preferable amongst the subjects regardless of gender and origin. However, the obese girl figures and boy figures were rated significantly more positively by Gypsy children than Hungarian children. Our results suggest that there is a difference in attitude towards obesity among Gypsy and Hungarian children. Therefore, it is worthwhile to further explore this phenomenon.
针对肥胖人群的偏见在科学文献中得到了广泛证实。因此，最近的研究越来越关注调查与肥胖态度相关的个体和文化因素。由于针对吉普赛人群尚未有过比较研究，我们目前的研究旨在探索肥胖儿童在吉普赛和匈牙利文化中的态度可能存在的差异。
我们的调查包括 247 名 9-16 岁的儿童（108 名男孩和 139 名女孩），其中 136 名自认为是匈牙利人（55.1%），而 111 名儿童（44.9%）自认为是吉普赛人。被试者被要求根据自己的喜好对六名男性和六名女性的人物画进行排名。每一系列的人物画都包括一个健康的孩子、一个肥胖的孩子和四个残疾儿童的画。
根据我们的结果，无论性别和出身如何，被试者都认为画有健康孩子的画最受欢迎，而画有肥胖孩子的画最不受欢迎。然而，吉普赛儿童对肥胖女孩和肥胖男孩的评价明显高于匈牙利儿童。
我们的研究结果表明，吉普赛和匈牙利儿童对肥胖的态度存在差异。因此，进一步探讨这一现象是值得的。
