Fruits and Vegetables at Home: Child and Parent Perceptions
Abstract
Objective
Examine child and parent perceptions of home food environment factors and associations with child fruit and vegetable (FV) intake.
Design
Research staff administered surveys to children during after-school sessions, and parents completed surveys by mail or over the phone.
Setting
Four urban elementary schools in St. Paul, Minnesota, serving primarily low-income populations.
Participants
Seventy-three children (55 girls, 18 boys) and 1 parent/guardian per child participated in a theater-based intervention aimed at obesity prevention.
Main Outcome Measures
Perceptions of home food environment factors (home FV availability, home FV accessibility; parental encouragement to eat FV; family meal frequency).
Analysis
Descriptive statistics and paired t tests.
Results
On average, child and parent perceptions of the home food environment were similar. When comparing child-parent dyad perceptions of home food environment, a moderate to high level of agreement (56%-86%) was found. Child report of home FV availability, home FV accessibility, parental encouragement to eat FV, and family meal frequency explained 26.7% of the variance in child FV intake, whereas parent report of these factors explained 4.9% of the variance.
Conclusions and Implications
It is important to understand both child and parent perceptions of the home food environment when developing interventions aimed at increasing child FV intake.
1Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
2Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, Harvard Medical School/Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Boston, MA
Address for correspondence: Ramona Robinson-O'Brien, PhD, RD, Assistant Professor, Nutrition Department, College of Saint Benedict & Saint John's University, 37 South College Ave., St. Joseph, MN 56374; Phone: (320) 363-5781; Post Doctoral Fellow, Division of Epidemiology and Community Health, University of Minnesota, 1300 South 2nd Street, Suite 300, Minneapolis, MN 55454; Phone: (612) 625-3404
This work was completed while the first author was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota. This study was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and by the National Institutes of Health grant number R21 DK072972 (PI: Neumark-Sztainer). The first author's time was supported by the Adolescent Health Protection Program (School of Nursing, University of Minnesota) grant number T01-DP000112 (PI: Bearinger) from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
ABSTRACT