Food parenting practices for 5 to 12 year old children: a concept map analysis of parenting and nutrition experts input

Abstract

BackgroundParents are an important influence on children’s dietary intake and eating behaviors. However, the lack of a conceptual framework and inconsistent assessment of food parenting practices limits our understanding of which food parenting practices are most influential on children. The aim of this study was to develop a food parenting practice conceptual framework using systematic approaches of literature reviews and expert input.MethodA previously completed systematic review of food parenting practice instruments and a qualitative study of parents informed the development of a food parenting practice item bank consisting of 3632 food parenting practice items. The original item bank was further reduced to 110 key food parenting concepts using binning and winnowing techniques. A panel of 32 experts in parenting and nutrition were invited to sort the food parenting practice concepts into categories that reflected their perceptions of a food parenting practice conceptual framework. Multi-dimensional scaling produced a point map of the sorted concepts and hierarchical cluster analysis identified potential solutions. Subjective modifications were used to identify two potential solutions, with additional feedback from the expert panel requested.ResultsThe experts came from 8 countries and 25 participated in the sorting and 23 provided additional feedback. A parsimonious and a comprehensive concept map were developed based on the clustering of the food parenting practice constructs. The parsimonious concept map contained 7 constructs, while the comprehensive concept map contained 17 constructs and was informed by a previously published content map for food parenting practices. Most of the experts (52%) preferred the comprehensive concept map, while 35% preferred to present both solutions.ConclusionThe comprehensive food parenting practice conceptual map will provide the basis for developing a calibrated Item Response Modeling (IRM) item bank that can be used with computerized adaptive testing. Such an item bank will allow for more consistency in measuring food parenting practices across studies to better assess the impact of food parenting practices on child outcomes and the effect of interventions that target parents as agents of change.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12966-017-0572-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The Comprehensive Snack Parenting Questionnaire (CSPQ): Development and Test-Retest Reliability

“…The use of both experts and parents to establish the content and scope of FPPs around snacking resulted in an instrument that likely covers all relevant constructs. This notion is further supported by other studies that aimed at identifying and defining FPPs constructs [ 17 , 36 , 37 ]. The recently published parenting around Snacking Questionnaire [ 38 ] also corroborates many of the constructs measured in the CSPQ.…”

“…It showed that parents use parenting practices in combination, and that this complex interactional nature can be captured perfectly to predict children’s snack intake. Since we believe that the theoretical dimensions of food parenting practices currently proposed in the literature (e.g., autonomy support, coercive control, and structure) [ 17 , 36 , 37 ] do not fully account for this complex interactional nature of FPPs, we did not test an a priori formulated factor structure (i.e., structural validity) in our ongoing research on measurement properties of the CSPQ. We encourage the use of cluster analyses to further corroborate this notion.…”

Social justice competencies for counselling and psychotherapy: Perceptions of experienced practitioners and implications for contemporary practice

“…Participants have been students, teachers and parents in the same school (Haymovitz, Houseal‐Allport, Lee & Svistova, ) and parents, practitioners and administrators concerned about parent enrolment of children in preventive programs (Houle, Besnard, Berube & Dagenais, ). Topics range considerably, such as personal experiences of disability (Elsman, van Rens, Hermanus, Bartholomeus, van Nispen & Antoinette, ), practices of caregivers with children (O’Connor et al, ), and relationships and dating violence (Goldman, Mulford & Blachman‐Demner, ).…”

Keigaaf

“…This questionnaire was developed after a thorough search of the literature and assesses five parenting constructs: nurturance, structure, behavioral control, overprotection, and coercive control [143]. Unfortunately, there is little consensus on how to best measure food parenting practices [198]. There are at least 71 instruments measuring food parenting practices [199].…”

“…In most cases, these instruments measure a small part of the spectrum of food parenting practices [199]. Fortunately, a comprehensive food parenting practices item bank is currently being developed, which will allow a more consistent and comprehensive measurement of food parenting practices in the future [198]. For the measurement of the family-level influence, we recommend the use of the FNC.…”