Changes in school environment, awareness and actions regarding overweight prevention among Dutch secondary schools between 2006–2007 and 2010–2011

Table 3 Awareness and responsibility of the schools towards the overweight problem and school policy

Outcome variable¹	Baseline	Follow up	P-value²
	(2006/2007)	(2010/2011)
	% (n)	% (n)
The prevalence of obesity has increased among students			0. 27
No	40 (72)	40 (72)
Yes	34 (61)	29 (52)
Don’t know	27 (48)	31 (55)
Overweight is more prevalent among the students at school than in the general population			0. 04
Yes	6 (10)	8 (13)
Equal	12 (21)	20 (34)
No	82 (140)	73 (124)
Responsibility for the prevention of overweight among students
Schools	40 (72)	37 (67)	0.38
Parents	98 (177)	98 (177)	1.00
Students	81 (146)	77 (139)	0.17
Government	15 (27)	17 (32)	0.49
Policy
School has policy on:
General health	12 (22)	17 (30)	0.11
(Healthy) nutrition	49 (85)	57 (96)	0.16
Physical activity	55 (86)	52 (82)	0.58
Overweight	11 (19)	17 (28)	0.14
Compliance to policy on diet, physical and/ or overweight at schools? ³			0. 76
Very well	0 (0)	4 (2)
Well	32 (17)	26 (14)
Sufficient	59 (31)	64 (34)
Insufficient	9 (5)	6 (3)
Poor	0 (0)	0 (0)
School experiences barriers/ obstacles by implementation of their policy on diet, physical and/or overweight ³	63 (40)	58 (43)	0. 47

¹% yes (n) or otherwise indicated.
² P for change. Changes in dichotomous outcome variables are tested using conditional logistic regression. Changes in ordinal outcome variables are analyzed by linear regression analysis. All models are adjusted for (changes in) school level and school size. P-values below 0.05 are considered to be statistically significant.
³ Among schools with a policy on diet, physical and/or overweight at baseline and follow up (n = 97).