Low educational level implied elementary school education only; intermediate educational level implied secondary, nonacademic education; and high educational level implied academic education.
Educational level was classified into three categories based on the length of educational achievement: (1) low educational level, i.e. 8 years of education or less, (2) intermediate educational level, i.e. 9 12 years of education, and (3) high educational level, i.e. more than 12 years of education [ 15].
Mothers with an intermediate educational level were less likely to use foods to reward than highly educated mothers.
In contrast to earlier studies, which reported that highly educated mothers make less use of food as a reward for positive behavior and make less use of emotional feeding [ 13], our results showed that mothers with an intermediate educational level were less likely to use foods as reward than highly educated mothers.
Most patients were married and had a low or intermediate educational level (Table 1).
The intermediate educational level (9 12 years) was more common in men than in women (12.3 and 7.1%, respectively).
The absolute educational differences were 429 per 100,000 person-years and 223 per 100,000 person-years for the groups with low and intermediate educational levels, respectively, relative to the group with high educational level.
The absolute educational differences were 163 per 100,000 person-years and 70 per 100,000 person-years, respectively, for the groups with low and intermediate educational levels, respectively, compared to the high educational level group.
The latter group is sub-grouped according to the average educational level required for any particular occupation, yielding five occupational categories: unskilled manual worker, skilled manual worker, low-level clerk, intermediate level clerk, high level clerk.
Most of the participating women were aged 25 34 years (median age 32), had low (36%) or intermediate (40%) educational level, had their first sexual intercourse or first regular sexual partner before the age of 20 (median 18 and 19 years, respectively), reported a single regular lifelong sexual partner (74%), and had at least two full term pregnancies (median=2).
Additional potential confounders were gender, age, education (categorized into low, intermediate, and high educational level), contractual working hours (part time/full time), current smoking (yes/no), and physical activity (days a week physically active for at least 30 minutes and of at least moderate intensity).
