What do US and Canadian parents do to encourage or discourage physical activity among their 5-12 Year old children?

BMC Public Health

Research Article

Louise C. Mâsse¹  Andrew W. Tu¹  Mark R. Beauchamp²  Tom Baranowski³  Teresia M. O’Connor³  Sheryl O. Hughes³ 

[1] Child & Family Research Institute, School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada;School of Kinesiology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada;USDA/ARS Children’s Nutrition Research Center, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA;

关键词: Parenting;    Parenting practices;    Physical activity;    Child;    Qualitative;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12889-017-4918-z

 received in 2017-08-02, accepted in 2017-11-15,  发布年份 2017

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundParents have the potential to substantively influence their child’s physical activity. This study identified the parenting practices of US and Canadian parents to encourage or discourage their 5-12 year-old child’s physical activity and to examine differences in parenting practices by country, parental sex, age of child, and income.MethodsThe sample consisted of 134 US and Canadian parents (54.5% US; 60.4% female) recruited from a web-based panel by a polling firm. The parents answered open-ended questions about what they and other parents do to encourage or discourage their child to be active. Responses were coded using a scheme previously developed to code items used in the published literature. Coded responses were summarized by domain and dimension with differences in responses by country, parental sex, age of child, or household income assessed with a log-linear analysis.ResultsThe 134 parents provided 649 and 397 responses to ways that parents encourage or discourage their child’s physical activity, respectively. Over 70% of responses for practices that encourage physical activity were related to structure of the environment, parental encouragement, and co-participation. The most common response was co-participation in activity with the child. Of the practices that discourage physical activity, 67% were related to structure of the environment, lack of parental control, and modeling poor behaviors. The most common response was allowing screen time. There were no differences in response by country, parental sex, child age, or household income.ConclusionsParents most often encouraged physical activity through structure and emotional support and discouraged physical activity through lack of structure and control. Understanding how parents influence their child’s physical activity may help improve intervention strategies. The current results will inform the development of a physical activity parenting practices instrument.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© The Author(s). 2017