Healthy Children, Healthy Families: Parents Making A Difference

The checklist is a 16-item instrument that assesses parents'/caregivers' parenting and personal practices around food and physical activity, as well as the target child's food and physical activity practices. The checklist asks parents to report frequency (per day/week/month) of practices on 5-point Likert-type scales. The constructs measure parent diet quality and physical activity, child diet quality and physical activity, and parenting practices. Each question on the instrument is converted to a numeric value, 1 for the least desirable to 5 for most desirable response. The values for the entire instrument are summed (range 1 - 80 - only those checklists with at least one response are included) and divided by the number of items with a response (0 - 16), resulting in a mean score range of 0 - 5. The questions within each sub-scale are handled in the same way, with a sub-scale range of 0 - 5.

Six sub-scales (24 items) aligned with the learning objectives of the intervention, were selected from the original CFPQ. The constructs assessed by the sub-scales include encouraging balance and variety, use of food as reward, parent allowing child to control eating, parental modeling, parental pressure for child to consume more food, and home environment. Response options for 6 items include frequency on a Likert-type scale (never to always) and for 18 items include a Likert scale (strongly disagree to strongly agree). Each response is converted to a numeric value, 1 for the least desirable to 5 for the most desirable option. These values are then summed (range 0 - 120) and divided by the number of items with a response, resulting in a mean scale score range of 0 - 5. The items within each sub-scale are handled in the same way, with the sub-scale ranges of 0 - 5.

Four items were selected assessing parental efficacy for influencing behaviors addressed in the interventions: child's physical activity; and fruit, vegetable, and sugar sweetened beverage intake. The item responses included a 5-point Likert-type scale (not sure to extremely sure). Each question is converted to a numeric value, 1 for the least to 5 for the most desirable. These values are summed (range 0 - 20) and divided by the number of items with a response (0 - 4), resulting in a mean scale score range of 0 - 5.

Five items were selected from a 10-item instrument; selected items specifically focus on sugar-sweetened beverages and foods with added sugars. Parents report the number of times per day the child consumes each. Based on initial responses, a scoring system was devised that assigned 7 for a response of zero intake (most desirable) to 1 for a response of >2.5 times per day (least desirable). The response values are then summed (range 0 - 35) and divided by 5, resulting in a mean scale score range of 0 - 7.

Two scales are used from the Food Behavior Checklist to assess parents' self-reported food intake of fruits and vegetables (9 items) and overall diet quality (4 items). Nine items have Likert-type responses with 8 being never to always (scored 1 - 4), and one being poor to excellent (scored 1-5), with the higher score being most desirable in all cases. The responses to two items are no or yes, scored 1 or 5 respectively. Two items ask for number of servings consumed per day and are assigned the value provided. The fruit and vegetable 9-item scale response values are summed (range = 1 - (26+sum of 2 frequency responses). The diet quality 4-item scale response values are summed (range 1 - 17). The sum for each scale is divided by the number of items in the scale resulting in a mean scale score range of 0-7 for the 9-item scale and 0-4.25 for the 4-item scale.