¶ … Kids Are Different
It does appear that some of the results of the children are statistically significant when looking at the different between what the school district says and what the NIM says. However, the average BMI of 25.5 versus 24.1 is not that much different. I would not see that as being very significant. What I would see as significant is the number of children who have a BMI over 27-17.7% versus 1.8%. That is a huge difference, and there must be a reason for it. It is possible that the reason is due to the great efforts of the school district and what it is doing to ensure that children eat healthy and exercise. There is no way just from looking at this data to say that this is not the case. It is very suspect, though, because most school districts do not have the funding to work with students that closely and what students do at home when it comes to eating and exercise is not controllable.
It seems more likely that the school district did not select students as 'randomly' as they stated they did, and therefore did not get a fair and accurate representation of what percentage of their students are actually overweight. The NIM study probably took a more proportionate cross-sample of students all over the country to come up with a percentage, and I would be more inclined to believe that the NIM number was more accurate that the school district number. The NIM number, however, does seem like it is a bit high, and may still not be completely representative of what is accurate.
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