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ARS Home » Plains Area » Houston, Texas » Children's Nutrition Research Center » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #279839
Title: Parent-reported social support for child’s fruit and vegetable intake: validity of measures

Author
item DAVE, JAYNA - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)
item EVANS, ALEXANDRA - University Of Texas
item CONDRASKY, MARGE - Clemson University
item WILLIAMS, JOEL - Clemson University

Submitted to: Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/9/2012
Publication Date: 3/1/2012
Citation: Dave, J.M., Evans, A.E., Condrasky, M.D., Williams, J.E. 2012. Parent-reported social support for child’s fruit and vegetable intake: validity of measures. Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior. 44(2):132-139.

Interpretive Summary: Social support from the parents is important to help develop children’s healthy dietary behavior. Although it is important to obtain data about perceived social support from the child’s perspective, it is also important to obtain these data from the parent’s perspective. Thus, the goal of the paper was to develop and validate measures of parental social support to increase their child’s fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption. Two hundred three parents with at least 1 elementary school-aged child completed the questionnaire included instrumental social support scale (ISSPS), emotional social support scale (ESSPS), household FV availability and accessibility index, and demographics. The ISSPS and ESSPS subscales, including positive encouragement, negative role modeling, discouragement, and reinforcement, demonstrated good internal consistency reliability and were found to be suitable for impact assessment of an intervention designed to target parents to help their children eat more FV.

Technical Abstract: The objective of our study was to develop and validate measures of parental social support to increase their child’s fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption. We used a cross-sectional study design by studying participants at school and home. We studied two hundred three parents with at least 1 elementary school-aged child. The study asked parents to completed a questionnaire that included instrumental social support scale (ISSPS), emotional social support scale (ESSPS), household FV availability and accessibility index, and demographics. We used an exploratory factor analysis with promax rotation was conducted to obtain the psychometric properties of ISSPS and ESSPS. Internal consistency and test-retest reliabilities were also assessed. The results of the factor analysis indicated a 4-factor model for ESSPS: positive encouragement, negative role modeling, discouragement, and an item cluster called reinforcement. Psychometric properties indicated that ISSPS performed best as independent single scales with alpha =.87. Internal consistency reliabilities were acceptable, and test-retest reliabilities ranged from low to acceptable. Correlations between scales, subscales, and item clusters were significant (P < .05). In addition, ISSPS and the positive encouragement subscale were significantly correlated with household FV availability. Our conclutions show that the ISSPS and ESSPS subscales demonstrated good internal consistency reliability and are suitable for impact assessment of an intervention designed to target parents to help their children eat more fruit and vegetables.