The association of parent's outcome expectations for child TV viewing with parenting practices and child TV viewing: An examination using path analysis

Authors: JOHNSON, LAUREN - Baylor College Of Medicine; CHEN, TZU - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC); HUGHES, SHERYL - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC); O'CONNOR, TERESIA - Children'S Nutrition Research Center (CNRC)

Submitted to: International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/20/2015
Publication Date: 5/28/2015
Citation: Johnson, L., Chen, T.A., Hughes, S.O., O'Connor, T.M. 2015. The association of parent's outcome expectations for child TV viewing with parenting practices and child TV viewing: An examination using path analysis. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. 12:70.

Interpretive Summary: TV viewing is common among elementary school aged children and can have both a beneficial and harmful impact on children's behavioral and health outcomes. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommend children limit their screen media use, including TV viewing, to no more than two hours per day, yet any children exceed these recommendations. Parental restrictions on TV viewing are associated with less TV viewing by children, however, it is not clear why only parents restrict their children's screen use and others view a lot of TV with their child. In order to convince parents in future interventions to restrict TV viewing to recommended amounts, understanding what influences parents to restrict TV viewing or view TV socially with their child is important. Previously we conducted interviews with parents and developed a new instrument to measure their outcome expectations of the benefits or harms for allowing their child to watch TV (POETV- parent's outcome expectations for child's TV viewing). In this study, we investigated the associations of parent's positive and negative POETV on their use of TV restrictive parenting practices, social co-viewing with their child, allowing a TV in the child's bedroom, and children's TV viewing. We found that POETV and parenting practices were associated with children's TV viewing, however allowing a TV in the child's bedroom was the strongest influence. In addition, POETV and parenting may have a greater impact on weekend TV viewing, when children tend to watch more TV, than weekdays. The models suggest that POETV, parenting and especially removing the TV from children's rooms may be promising targets for interventions to reduce children's TV viewing and potentially to prevent obesity.

Technical Abstract: Television (TV) viewing has been associated with many undesirable outcomes for children, such as increased risk of obesity, but TV viewing can also have benefits. Although restrictive parenting practices are effective in reducing children's TV viewing, not all parents use them and it is currently unclear why. The current study examined parenting practices related to TV viewing in the context of social-cognitive theory. Specifically, we hypothesized that positive and negative Parental Outcome Expectations for child's TV Viewing (POETV) would be associated with social co-viewing and restrictive parenting practices, and that POETV and parenting practices influence the amount of TV viewed by child. Data were collected from an internet survey of 287 multi-ethnic parents and their 6–12 year old children on participants' sociodemographic information, parenting practices related to TV use, POETV, and parent and child TV viewing. Path analysis was used to examine the relationship amongst variables in separate models for weekday and weekend TV viewing, controlling for child age, household education, and parental TV viewing. The results provided partial support for the hypotheses, with notable differences between weekday and weekend viewing. The models explained 13.6 % and 23.4 % of the variance in children's TV viewing on weekdays and weekends respectively. Neither positive nor negative POETV were associated with restrictive TV parenting in either model. One subscale each from positive and negative POETV were associated with social co-viewing parenting on both weekends and weekdays in the expected direction. Restrictive parenting practices were directly negatively associated with children's TV viewing on weekdays, but not weekends. Social co-viewing parenting was directly positively associated with children's TV viewing on weekends, but not weekdays. The strongest influence on children's TV viewing was having a TV in the child's bedroom. Negative POETV was weakly associated with having a TV in the child's room. These findings suggest that POETV and parenting may have a greater impact on weekend TV viewing, when children tend to watch more TV, than weekday. The models suggest that POETV, parenting and especially removing the TV from children's rooms may be promising targets for interventions.