ACCULTURATION AND POST-IMMIGRATION CHANGES IN OBESITY, PHYSICAL ACTIVITY, AND NUTRITION: COMPARING HISPANICS AND ASIANS IN THE WATERLOO REGION, ONTARIO, CANADA.
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: The acculturation hypothesis speculates that as new immigrants get exposed to more obesogenic environments, they progressively acquire the unhealthy lifestyles of the host society, and their obesity risk gradually increases since time of arrival. However, the consistency of the presumed acculturation effect across immigrant groups and gender, and the reasons behind individual changes in lifestyle behaviors remain unclear. Thus, this study investigated the acculturation hypothesis in the Canadian context by comparing two foreign groups, Hispanics and East/Southeast Asians, which present contrasting post-settlement obesity patterns and behavioral trends.\nMethods: A 41-item questionnaire (including open-ended questions) was administered with 100 first-generation immigrants in the K-W Region to gather information on weight-relatedmeasures, acculturation levels, psychological stress, lifestyle behaviors, and perceived causes of changes in diet and physical activity. A logistic regression analysis was performed to estimate the likelihood of being overweight-obese, while interview transcripts were analyzed to identify response themes and explore causal relationships.\nRESULTS: Hispanics exhibited considerably higher body mass index levels and larger weight gains, and a nearly nine times higher overweight risk than East/Southeast Asians. Overweight risk was also higher for males and less-educated immigrants. Data collected shows that weight gains were larger for newcomers with high average psychological stress scores, and 38% of Hispanic participants mentioned either stress or depression as causes for their weight gains. The acculturation analysis revealed that East/Southeast Asians were significantly less integrated into Canadian society and more likely to maintain their traditional diets, while both groups reportedperceived-increased levels of recreational physical activity, which contradicts the belief of a linear uniform adoption of unhealthy lifestyle behaviors.\nDISCUSSION: Results support the notion that the impact of duration of residence does vary by ethnicity and gender. Future prevention efforts should focus on the foreign groups most likely to develop obesity, and pay particular attention to less-educated immigrants, who may be more likely to acquire unhealthy habits after settlement. Results also highlight the emergence of acculturative stress as a significant obesity-risk factor, and support the implementation of obesity preventive efforts that help immigrants manage post-settlement-related feelings of anxiety and depression through the inclusion of social integration strategies.\nIn an increasingly diverse and multiethnic Canada, we expect the dissemination of the research findings to help recent and long-term immigrants to become more aware of obesity-relatedissues, and thus facilitate the adoption of healthier lifestyles after settlement in Canada.
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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 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 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".