Promoting Healthier Eating via Parental Communication: Development and Validation of the Active and Restrictive Parental Guidance Questionnaire (PARQ)

Direct and indirect relationships between Food Parental Practices, diet quality, and food satisfaction in adolescents

Introduction

The relationship between four parental feeding practices from the Comprehensive Feeding Practices Questionnaire for adolescents (CFPQ-Teen) and Satisfaction With Food-related Life (SWFoL) in adolescents was evaluated using diet quality measured using the Adapted Healthy Eating Index (AHEI) as a mediating variable.

Methods

Participants were 860 adolescents aged 10-16 years of both sexes who responded to four factors on the CFPQ-Teen, food satisfaction scale, and diet quality index. Structural equation analysis was used in a structural mediation model on a polychoric correlation matrix using the weighted least squares mean-variance adjusted (WLSMV) method.

Results

Diet quality was a mediating factor in the interaction between two parental practices related to parental modeling and adolescent control over SWFoL. There was evidence of a direct relationship between monitoring and restrictive factors for weight control and SWFoL.

Conclusions

The findings indicated that the association between parental feeding practices and food satisfaction may be direct or mediated by diet quality in adolescents.

Children's perception of food parenting practices: adaptation and validation of the comprehensive feeding practices questionnaire in Chilean adolescents

Introduction

Assessment of the Comprehensive Feeding Practices Questionnaire in adolescents (CFPQ-Teen) is still limited, with no evaluation of the measurement invariance. The participants comprised 473 Chilean adolescents of both sexes from dual-income nuclear families. The aims of this study were: (1) to adapt to Spanish and validate a model of five-factor version the CFPQ-Teen; (2) to examine the psychometric properties, (3) to evaluate the measurement invariance according to the adolescents' gender; and (4) to compare the scores of each factor between female and male adolescents.

Methods

The instrument was translated, back-translated, and adapted from the CFPQ-Teen, confirming the equivalence, conceptual, and face validity in a pilot sample of 40 adolescents. An exploratory factor analysis was performed on the five-factor model of the CFPQ-Teen: Monitoring, Adolescent Control, Restriction for weight control, Parental Modeling, and Environment. The Environment factor was eliminated as a result.

Results

The confirmatory factor analysis presented good reliability, convergent, discriminant, and concurrent validity values. In addition, medium to high goodness-of-fit levels were obtained by eliminating an item from the Adolescent Control factor. These results confirm a final 20-item model representing four factors. The multigroup invariance analysis of the measurement model verified configural, metric, scalar, and partial strict invariance. No significant differences were found between females and males in the scores on the four factors.

Discussion

These results enable comparisons by sex on the perceptions of Food Parenting Practices from the analyzed factors, primarily within the context of the Chilean sample.

'My Mom Got Influenced by Yours': The persuasiveness of mom influencers in relation to mothers' food assessments and decisions

Childhood obesity is a worldwide health problem with a range of short- and long-term health and social consequences; however, the World Health Organization (WHO) argues that this epidemic is preventable and reversible. The biggest dietary gatekeepers of children are their parents and more specifically mothers, whose attitudes and consumption choices are nowadays often affected by the opinions of influencers on social network sites (SNSs). Using two experimental studies, the current paper investigates how mothers' food assessments and decisions for their children are affected by sponsored posts on social media. The first study adopted a two-level between-subjects experiment (N = 81), which showed that mothers like sponsored Instagram posts better when they are posted by a mom influencer (i.e. a mother who accumulated a large following on social media and often engages in sponsored partnerships with brands) compared to a brand. This consequently positively affected source credibility, post engagement, purchase intention and the child appropriateness of the food. In the second experiment, a two-by-two between-subjects design (N = 169) showed that while a typical mom influencer is perceived as less effective in promoting food compared to an expert (i.e. a pediatric nutritionist) mom influencer due to lower credibility, a typical mom influencer is more efficient in promoting unhealthy foods through higher influencer-brand congruence.

Parent Involvement in Diet or Physical Activity Interventions to Treat or Prevent Childhood Obesity: An Umbrella Review

Parents substantially influence children’s diet and physical activity behaviors, which consequently impact childhood obesity risk. Given this influence of parents, the objective of this umbrella review was to synthesize evidence on effects of parent involvement in diet and physical activity treatment and prevention interventions on obesity risk among children aged 3–12 years old. Ovid/MEDLINE, Elsevier/Embase, Wiley/Cochrane Library, Clarivate/Web of Science, EBSCO/CINAHL, EBSCO/PsycInfo, and Epistemonikos.org were searched from their inception through January 2020. Abstract screening, full-text review, quality assessment, and data extraction were conducted independently by at least two authors. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses of diet and physical activity interventions that described parent involvement, included a comparator/control, and measured child weight/weight status as a primary outcome among children aged 3–12 years old were included. Data were extracted at the level of the systematic review/meta-analysis, and findings were narratively synthesized. Of 4158 references identified, 14 systematic reviews and/or meta-analyses (eight treatment focused and six prevention focused) were included and ranged in quality from very low to very high. Our findings support the inclusion of a parent component in both treatment and prevention interventions to improve child weight/weight status outcomes. Of note, all prevention-focused reviews included a school-based component. Evidence to define optimal parent involvement type and duration and to define the best methods of involving parents across multiple environments (e.g., home, preschool, school) was inadequate and warrants further research. PROSPERO registration: CRD42018095360.

Examining the Moderating Effect of Parenting Style and Parental Guidance on Children's Beliefs about Food: A Test of the Parenting Style-as-Context Model

Research examining the effect of parenting practices on child food consumption has often neglected the role in which global aspects of parenting - such as parenting style - play in shaping children's dietary behaviors. To address this gap, the parenting style-as-context model was used to examine the moderating effects of parenting style - defined as the perceived emotional climate communicated to children by their parents - on the association between parental guidance of food consumption and children's beliefs surrounding food. A cross-sectional survey of 1,113 child/adolescent participants between the ages of 9 and 18 was conducted to test the theoretical propositions derived from the parenting style-as-context model. Results suggest desirable relationships between different dimensions of parental guidance of food consumption on children's beliefs surrounding foods were stronger among children who were under an authoritative parenting style compared to other parenting styles. The results offer some support for the parenting style-as-context model and has theoretical and practical implications for research targeted at understanding the role parents play in inculcating healthy dietary habits among children.