Page 68 - AEI Insights 2018 Vol 4 Issue 1

AEI Insights, Vol 4, Issue 1, 2018

Participants
In Sweden, a total of 185 people participated in the study and reported were living in Sweden
and having Swedish as their first language (100 women and 85 men). In Malaysia, 200 people
(100 male and 100 female respondents) responded either to the English or Malay version of
the questionnaire. As the Malaysian sample consisted of only Malays who make up about 60
per cent of the population in Malaysia, this study therefore cannot be generalized to all
Malaysians, which also include Chinese (25 per cent), Indians (8 per cent) and other indigenous
ethnic groups (7 per cent) (Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2012).

Table 1: Demographic profile of participants: Gender, Age, Education level, Weight status

Respondent characteristics Sweden Malaysia

N (total sample size) 185 200

Gender n, (per cent)
Male 85 (45.9) 100 (50)
Female 100 (53.1) 100 (50)

Age range n, (per cent)
Under 30 (0-30) 61 (33) 156 (78)
Above 30 (31 and above) 124 (67) 40 (20)

Education level n, (per cent)
Below university 107 (58) 53 (26.5)
University degree and higher 78 (42) 146 (73)

Self estimate on body weight n, (per cent)

Underweight/normal 118 (64) 113 (56.5)
Overweight/obese 67 (36) 83 (41.5)

As can be seen in Table 1, the Malaysian Malays sample has more young respondents than the
Swedish sample. There is almost an equal distribution of gender in both samples. The
Malaysian Malays sample includes more university degree respondents than the Swedish
sample. The body weight was underweight/normal a little over 50 per cent with
underweight/normal weight (56.5 per cent for the Malaysian Malays sample and 64 per cent
for the Swedish sample). The Malaysian Malays sample is also slightly more overweight (41.5
per cent) than the Swedish sample (36 per cent). The data for the Malaysian sample does not
always sum up to 100 per cent, as not all participants filled in their data for all variables.
Analysis

The questions in the questionnaire focus on 2 themes:
 Awareness of health risks related to being overweight/obesity
 Preferences for information sources and evaluation of these sources

Responses to the yes-no and multiple-choice questions were calculated using Excel,
taxonomies of categories were made for the analysis of the responses to the open questions,
based on the semantic similarity of the given responses.

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