Grant: Operating Grant

Childhood obesity is rapidly increasing in Canada as well as in all developed countries. Since the family is important in shaping children's behaviours, parents can profoundly influence children's physical activity and dietary habits. Certain parenting practices (e.g., restrictive and controlling practices) have a more negative impact on a child's ability to develop healthy behaviours while other practices have more positive effects. Although parenting practices are widely recognized as an important target for family-based intervention, our ability to understand the influence of the family is hampered by our ability to measure parenting practices. Researchers have developed different ways to measure parenting practices related to physical activity and nutrition; however no agreement has been reached in the scientific community. To remedy this situation this study proposes to first engage the international scientific community in developing a common conceptual framework for assessing parenting practices related to physical activity and nutrition. We will then use this information to standardize our measurement of parenting practices by developing a bank of items. We will assess the validity and reliability of the parenting measures by administering the bank of items to 3150 parents of children 3 to 16 years of age. Lastly, we will conduct a pilot study with 88 families to assess relationships among parenting practices, children's behaviours, and children's weight. Findings from this study will provide the groundwork for future research aimed at understanding the influence of parenting practices. Having better methods to assess how parenting affects a child's weight is relevant to both the research community and health practitioners, and is necessary for designing effective interventions to identify the active component of the familial environment in relation to childhood obesity.