The FLASHE Study: Survey Development, Dyadic Perspectives, and Participant Characteristics

Abstract

The National Cancer Institute developed the Family Life, Activity, Sun, Health, and Eating (FLASHE) Study to examine multiple cancer preventive behaviors within parent–adolescent dyads. The purpose of creating FLASHE was to enable the examination of physical activity, diet, and other cancer preventive behaviors and potential correlates among parent–adolescent dyads. FLASHE surveys were developed from a process involving: literature reviews, scientific input from experts in the field, cognitive testing, and usability testing. This cross-sectional, web-based study of parents and their adolescent children (aged 12–17 years) was administered between April and October 2014. The nationwide sample consisted of 1,573 parent–adolescent dyads (1,699 parents and 1,581 adolescents) who returned all FLASHE surveys. FLASHE assessed parent and adolescent reports of several intrapersonal and interpersonal domains (including psychosocial variables, parenting, and the community and home environments). On a subset of example FLASHE items across these domains, responses of parents and adolescents within the same dyads were positively and significantly correlated (r =0.32–0.63). Analyses were run in 2015–2016. FLASHE data present multiple opportunities for studying research questions among individuals or dyads, including the ability to examine similarity between parents and adolescents on many constructs relevant to cancer preventive behaviors. FLASHE data are publicly available for researchers and practitioners to help advance research on cancer preventive health behaviors.

Home Matters: Adolescents Drink More Sugar-Sweetened Beverages When Available at Home

“…12 Data are publicly available and include parent and adolescent self-reported lifestyle behaviors that relate to cancer risk (eg, diet, physical activity, sun safety, tobacco use). The FLASHE sample was selected from the Ipsos’ Consumer Opinion Panel, a web-based panel with approximately 700 000 participants.…”

“…This item was reviewed by scientific advisors for public relevance and consistency with existing validated measures and surveys. 12,13 Parents were asked the same question, and parental responses to this question were 73.4% in agreement with adolescent responses. Self-reported adolescent responses ranged from “never” to “always” on a 5-point Likert scale.…”

Surveillance of Youth Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior With Wrist Accelerometry

“…Additional details on the methodology of FLASHE are reported in this journal issue. 15, 16 Briefly, parent participants were recruited from the Ipsos Consumer Opinion Panel. Eligibility criteria included being aged ≥18 years and living with at least one child aged 12–17 years for at least 50% of the time; one eligible adolescent from the household was randomly chosen.…”

Recruitment, Enrollment, and Response of Parent–Adolescent Dyads in the FLASHE Study

“…2 However, few public-use resources exist that focus on health behaviors of parent–adolescent dyads and utilize a multilevel perspective. 3 Collecting data on variables across the social context of parents and adolescents can be costly, as it is difficult to identify and screen eligible respondents and ensure compliance with study protocol. Web-based methodologies also tend to have lower recruitment, data collection, and data processing costs than random-digit dialing.…”

“…Although parenting, the environment, and psychosocial variables are correlates of adolescents’ health behaviors, national data sets have generally not included these variables in a survey that incorporates data from dyads. 3 FLASHE used web-based methods to recruit dyads and obtain parents and adolescents’ self-reports on similar surveys.…”