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Sunday, November 1, 2009
Learning Objective 1: describe a new questionnaire to assess parental self-efficacy for enacting healthy dietary and physical activity behaviors in their children ages 6-11 years.
Learning Objective 2: explain the association between childhood obesity and parental self-efficacy for enacting healthy diet and physical activity behaviors in their children.
The US is plagued by an epidemic of childhood overweight and obesity. Children present a unique challenge, as they are under the locus of control of so many parties, especially in the pre-adolescent years. However, parents are the key agents of change for children, especially those 6-11 years old. Thus, parents should be targeted for intervention for the prevention of childhood overweight and obesity. However, many parents exhibit a lack of self-efficacy for enacting healthy diet and physical activity behaviors for their children. However, there is no existing instrument to measure parental self-efficacy in this domain. The purpose of this study was to develop a reliable and valid questionnaire for the assessment of parental self-efficacy for enacting healthy diet and physical activity behaviors in their children ages 6-11 years. A 35-item questionnaire was developed based upon US Department of Agriculture guidelines for diet and physical activity and a review of the literature. Content validity was assessed and deemed acceptable by experts in relevant fields. Initial reliability was assessed with 15 eligible participants and was found to be adequate (α=0.95). A new convenience sample of 146 English reading and writing parents of children ages 6-11 with access to a computer and the internet were recruited. The questionnaire and two others, the Self-efficacy for Eating and Exercise Behaviors Surveys, were given to the mostly female, married, White participants, with 25 completing the questionnaire again in 5-10 days. Exploratory factor analysis suggested two subscales [diet behaviors (DB) and physical activity behaviors (PAB)], which demonstrated satisfactory convergent and discriminant validity. Internal reliability of the total (α=0.94), DB (α=0.93) and PAB (α=0.94) scores were excellent. Passable test-retest reliability and concurrent validity were also demonstrated. This questionnaire appears to be a valid and reliable measure, but needs further psychometric evaluation in a broader population.