Understanding parent concerns about children's diet, activity and weight status: an important step towards effective obesity prevention interventions.
OBJECTIVE
To identify parents' concerns and attitudes towards children's diets, activity habits and weight status.


METHODS
Computer-assisted telephone interviewing administration of a 37-item survey. Data were weighted for parental education level. Descriptive results are presented, and comparisons are made by the age, gender and parental characteristics of the child.


METHODS
Online research panel of Australian parents.


METHODS
A total of 1202 randomly selected parents of children aged 2-16 years, broadly representative of the Australian population.


RESULTS
Parents were concerned about their child's education (reported by 35 % of respondents), child's health and well-being (25 %), and violence, drugs and alcohol (20 %). Concern about nutrition was indicated by 14 % of respondents and concern about fitness/exercise was indicated by 3 % of the sample. Factors perceived as making a healthy diet difficult to achieve for their child were child resistance (89 %), the availability of healthy food (72 %), a busy lifestyle (67 %) and the influence of food advertising (63 %). Ninety-two per cent of parents thought that it was realistic for their child to be active for at least 1 h/d, with 75 % of parents feeling that it was realistic for their child to have less than 2 h recreational screen time per d. Despite this, common barriers to achieving the activity guidelines were lack of time, weather and keeping children occupied.


CONCLUSIONS
Insights into parental concerns from the current study may be useful in guiding development of interventions to improve children's nutrition and physical activity habits by framing messages in a way that are most likely to resonate with parents.
Slater
Amy
A
CSIRO Food and Nutritional Science, Adelaide BC, SA 5000, Australia.
Bowen
Jane
J
Corsini
Nadia
N
Gardner
Claire
C
Golley
Rebecca
R
Noakes
Manny
M
D000293:Adolescent; D000329:Advertising; D001294:Attitude to Health; D001315:Australia; D001835:Body Weight; D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004032:Diet / Q000592:standards; D015444:Exercise; D005260:Female; D005523:Food Supply; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008019:Life Style; D008297:Male; D009765:Obesity / Q000517:prevention & control*; D016487:Parenting; D011998:Recreation