Psychological Mechanisms Linking Food Insecurity and Obesity

Completed

Brief Summary: The current pilot study will examine emergent hypotheses by investigating the role of psychological mechanisms in the relationship between food insecurity and obesity. This objective will be achieved via a cross-sectional, observational pilot study collecting quantitative and qualitative data.

Detailed Description: This pilot study will investigate an emergent risk factor for obesity: food insecurity, which is defined as the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods. While paradoxically linked, numerous studies have shown a significant association between food insecurity and obesity. Moreover, recent narrative works have developed new, untested hypotheses linking food insecurity and obesity positing the causal role of psychological mechanisms. Given this, this mixed method pilot study will collect new psychological data in a sample of food secure and food insecure adults with and without obesity to examine the connections between food insecurity, body weight, and psychological constructs. The overarching objective of the study is to gather pilot data to identify potentially new intervention targets that will be used in future studies to more rigorously investigate the relationship between food insecurity and obesity.

Recruitment & Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria

Exclusion Criteria

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Delay Discounting	Through study completion, an average of 1 hour and 30 minutes at Study Visit 1	Assessed via the 27-Item Monetary Choice Questionnaire, which measures bias toward smaller, immediate rewards versus larger, delayed rewards. This questionnaire presents participants with a set of 27 choices between smaller, immediate monetary rewards and larger, delayed monetary rewards. Participants who discount the value of the delayed rewards more steeply are considered to be more impulsive. An estimate of a participant's discounting rate (k) is calculated from the pattern of choices. Values of k range from 0.00016 (ln transformation -8.74) to 0.25 (ln transformation -1.39), with higher values indicating a greater preference for smaller, immediate rewards over larger, delayed rewards. K tends to be skewed, so a natural log (ln) transformation is utilized to approximate a normal distribution for statistical analyses.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Grit	Through study completion, an average of 1 hour and 30 minutes at Study Visit 1	Assessed using the 8-item Short Grit Scale, which measures trait-level perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Scores range from 1 (not at all gritty) to 5 (extremely gritty).