Date of Award
6-7-2012
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Sociology, MA
First Advisor
Veena Kulkarni
Committee Members
Monica Ulrich; Roland Tusalem
Call Number
LD 251 .A566t 2012 W34
Abstract
The nation -wide increase in obesity rates has led to growing interest among academics and policy makers to identify factors related to obesity rates. The methodology adopted is a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques. The quantitative analysis entails a conducting OLS regression with obesity rates as the dependent variable and number of supercenters as the independent variable. The analysis is conducted at the county level covering all the 75 counties of the Arkansas. The qualitative part includes an ethnographic study of food selections among supercenters, supermarkets, and grocery stores for Jonesboro, one of the big towns in Arkansas. The findings from the multivariate regression suggest a significant negative relationship between obesity rates and number of supercenters which holds after controlling for poverty rate and population size. The qualitative analysis indicates a variation in food selection between supercenters, supermarkets and grocery stores in Jonesboro.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Whitehorn, Hillarie, "Exploring the Relationship Between Obesity and the Prevalence of Food Deserts in Arkansas" (2012). Student Theses and Dissertations. 875.
https://arch.astate.edu/all-etd/875
