A structural equation model for education, mental health, and nutrition for young Egyptians

Abstract EN

Modeling and analyzing critical issues such as the educational achievement, the mental health and the nutritional behavior of young people may result in important implications.

the current study investigates a simultaneous relationship involving the three main variables, with a new extended theoretical framework based on the univariate results from previous empirical studies from the many relevant disciplines.

the study also explores whether the mental health is a moderator for the relationship between the two other variables.

up to the knowledge of the researcher, these hypothesized ideas have not been investigated before.

the model carrying the hypotheses, which is named by the researcher the "e-m-n moderation model", is analyzed using the structural equation modeling tcchniquc (sem), after the needed statistical manipulations and tests and trcatements for all the statistical assumptions.

the results show that, based on the available data from the survey of young people in Egypt(sype-2009), the specified "e-m-n moderation model" is an acceptable fit.

but the hypotheses of simultaneous-moderation don't seem to be true in Egypt.

the researcher argues that this doesn’t necessarily imply that the hypothesized idea is not true and must be absolutely rejected, and several arguments are presented to show that this result is most probably due to the critical limitations of the study.

therfore, it is recommended that the idea and the model be tested on other datasets using special surveys avoiding the possible limitations.