Mother-child Agreement on the Child's Past Food Exposure

Abstract 

Objective

To assess mother-child agreement on the child's past food exposure, and factors affecting response discrepancy.

Methods

Twelve- to 14-year-old children and their mothers (n = 78) in an urban community, a rural community, and 2 orthodontic clinics completed a 69-item food questionnaire to determine mother-child level of agreement on the child's past consumption frequency; response discrepancies; the frequencies that the mother cooked for and ate together with her child; food types; mother-child pair effect; and food item effect.

Results

Sixty-eight percent of food items had moderate to good agreement (Kqw ≥ 0.41). Rural pairs had lower odds of producing response discrepancy (odds ratio = 0.55). Variances of the mother-child pair and food item random effects were 0.87 and 0.08, respectively.

Conclusions and Implications

The child's past food exposure recall by the mother and the child had moderate to good agreement, especially among rural mother-child pairs. Mother-child disagreement was not affected by the food items.

Key Words: agreement, mother-child relationship, food habits