Examining social norm impacts on obesity and eating behaviors among US school children based on agent-based model

BMC Public Health

Table 5 ABM simulation testing impact of misperception of social norm on social mean BMI changes- four scenarios ¹

	Baseline scenario	Scenario 1	Scenario 2	Scenario 2
	Baseline scenario	Qualitative deviance misperception	Consensus misperception	Probabilistic quantitative misperception
Grade	Mean	Mean	Mean	Mean
5th	20.15	20.15	20.15	20.15
6th	20.85	20.91	20.86	20.86
7th	21.52	21.64	21.55	21.54
8th	22.18	22.37	22.22	22.21

¹Baseline scenario-- Individual children correctly perceive the social mean BMI and adjust accordingly. Scenario1. Qualitative deviance misperception, i.e. children with a BMI above real social average perceived their BMI as under the average and make opposite BMI adjustments; Scenario 2. Consensus misperception, i.e. children with a BMI above real social average perceived others are having similar BMI and make no attempt to make changes; and Scenario 3. Probabilistic quantitative misperception, i.e. children with a BMI above social average correctly observed the real social average BMI with a range of probability and 50% of these children are able to make the expected changes while the remaining 50% follow Scenario 1.

ISSN: 1471-2458