ARS | Publication request: The reliability and validity of a questionnaire testing parents’ support for improving the diet of African American girls ages 9

Submitted to: Annals of Behavioral Medicine
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: January 1, 2010
Publication Date: April 1, 2010
Citation: Guillory, I.K., Cullen, K., Thompson, D.J. 2010. The reliability and validity of a questionnaire testing parents' support for improving the diet of African American girls ages 9–12 yrs [abstract]. Annals of Behavioral Medicine. 39(suppl 1):s98.

Technical Abstract: The prevalence of overweight in African American (AA) girls is higher than other ethnic groups. Increasing physical activity (PA) or decreasing energy intake is the goal of obesity prevention programs. Identifying factors that influence PA behavior is an important step in developing successful obesity prevention interventions. With this in mind, reliable and valid questionnaires to determine if parental support for PA is related to increased PA participation by AA girls are needed. We hypothesized that logistic support (LS) and explicit modeling (EM) for PA, which reflects positive parenting behaviors, would be related to positive parenting behaviors associated with diet. A questionnaire measuring parent modeling and logistic support for PA previously used with parents of Euro-American girls was tested. Sixty-seven AA families were recruited. Factor analysis was performed on the questionnaire. Reliability coefficients were calculated for each scale. Pearson correlations were calculated between the PA scales and the diet-related psychosocial scales for criterion validity. Reliability coefficients for PA logistic support (LS) and EM for child PA were 0.51 and 0.58 respectively. Parents who reported greater LS for PA reported greater encouragement of eating fruit and vegetables (r=0.25, p<0.05). Parents who reported greater EM for PA reported greater home availability of fruit (r=28, p<0.05), vegetable (r=39, p<0.01), and low fat foods (r=28, p<0.05), as well as serving more fruit and vegetables in the home (r=43, p<0.01), selecting healthy restaurants (r=28, p<0.05), and greater encouragement for eating fruit and vegetables (r=37, p<0.01). The questionnaire used to measure parent modeling and LS for PA has shown related criterion validity with diet psychosocial questionnaires when used with AA families. Future research should investigate increasing the reliability of the questionnaire and then its construct validity using an objective measure of PA.