ABSTRACT
This study shows that adolescents’ weight-related health risks can depend on the type of school attended: single-sex vs. coed. Our analyses of a 14-year survey of over 478,000 middle school students in South Korea, conducted from 2005 to 2019, indicate that while single-sex school attendance may increase the risk of being overweight, it also decreases the risk of being underweight compared to coed school attendance. We further confirmed that non-overweight girls in single-sex schools are less likely to engage in weight-loss efforts or participate in the unhealthy weight-loss methods such as having fewer meals and monotrophic diet. These findings imply that the coed and single-sex schools should adopt different approaches to improving their students’ weight-related health conditions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The KYRBS survey does not include information on weight-loss methods for 2018. For details on the KYRBS data, see notes to and Kim et al. (Citation2016).
2 The education offices often consider students’ school preference or home-to-school distance.
3 According to Kim et al. (Citation2016), in the self-reported KYRBS middle-school data, weight was under-reported by 1.7 kg (1.1 kg) for boys (girls), and height was under-reported (over-reported) by 1.3 cm (0.5 cm) for boys (girls). In an alternative analysis given in , we adjusted students’ weight and height in line with the sizes of over- and under-reporting and confirmed that the main results were maintained.