Impact of Acculturation and Acculturative Stress on Diet and Body Weight among International Students Moving from China to the United States
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objective To explore the impact of acculturation and acculturative stress on dietary intake, dietary behaviors, and body weight among international students in their sojourning experience from China to the United States. Methods This prospective observational study was conducted between August and December 2016 at a southeastern US university. Ninety‐three Chinese university sojourning students (55 male and 38 female) were recruited into the study within their first month of arrival to the US. Upon enrollment, participants completed a series of questionnaires about their health behaviors in China and had their height and weight assessed. Anthropometric assessments and the same questionnaires were repeated in December with two additional questionnaires: the Vancouver Index of Acculturation and the Acculturative Stress Scale. Results Participants experienced a significant decrease in dietary fiber, whole grains and vegetables intake, with a significant increase of sugar, sugar‐sweetened beverages, dairy and calcium consumption when compared to reported intake in China. Chinese students decreased the frequency of eating takeout foods, but consumed convenience foods more frequently. Students that indicated a high degree of acculturation had less of a decrease in fiber (p<0.05), fruit (p<0.01) and vegetables (p<0.05) intake, but acculturation exacerbated the increase in sugar consumption (p<0.05). Students with higher acculturative stress reported a greater decrease in vegetable consumption (p<0.05), increased consumption of takeout foods (p<0.05) and skipped breakfast more frequently (p<0.05) in the US compared with those reporting lower acculturative stress. Using a hierarchical regression model, the interaction of acculturative stress and acculturation was significantly associated with the change of whole grain intake (p<0.05); specifically, as acculturative stress increased, students reporting high acculturation had a greater decrease in whole grain intake than those reporting low acculturation. There was a significant increase in body weight (1.03kg ± 0.35) among female subjects but no change among males. Conclusion This three‐month prospective study showed that Chinese international students had less healthy eating behaviors and dietary intake after moving to the US. Moreover, the impact of acculturation and acculturative stress on these health behaviors is complex. Findings from this study support the rationale for researchers and university administrators to provide supportive programs to reduce stress associated with acculturation and support healthy living for Chinese international students.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".