Giving Children a Voice: A Novel Approach to Reveal Preschool-age Children's Concepts Related to Food and the Organization of These Concepts.

preschool-age children;concepts related to food;Family Medicine and Primary Care;Nursing;Pediatrics;Humanities (General);Psychology;Social Sciences (General);Health Sciences;Humanities;Social Sciences;Nursing

Schultz, Celeste M.Danford, Cynthia A ;

University of Michigan

关键词: preschool-age children;    concepts related to food;    Family Medicine and Primary Care;    Nursing;    Pediatrics;    Humanities (General);    Psychology;    Social Sciences (General);    Health Sciences;    Humanities;    Social Sciences;    Nursing;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/116780/celestms_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Childhood obesity affects nearly one in ten preschool-age children placing them at risk for adverse health outcomes.Obesity is often attributed to behaviors of eating either large quantities of food and/or energy dense, non-nutritious foods.Behavior, itself, is thought to be underpinned and motivated by beliefs/tacit knowledge.As such, what preschool-age children know about eating may partly be explained by their personal beliefs or their concepts about food. However, little is known about preschool-age children’s concepts related to food and the organization of these concepts.The purpose of this portion of a larger mixed-methods study exploring preschool-age children’s beliefs/tacit knowledge about eating was to reveal their concepts related to food and the organization of these concepts with those who were obese and those who were of healthy weight.Free lists and card sorts embedded within an ethnographic interview were used to elicit preschool-age children’s responses that revealed their concepts related to food and the organization of these concepts.Sixty preschool-age children, 30 who were obese and 30 who were of healthy weight, participated in this study.There were no significant differences in what children from both groups typically knew about food.However, there were modest differences in the food items that were representative of each group.Results from the analysis of the card sort found that preschool-age children who were obese and children who were of healthy weight organize their concepts related to food differently. Free listing is a technique where participants are asked to ;;Tell me all the _____ you can think of.”In contrast, card sorts is a technique where participants are asked to sort cards.Evaluation of the data elicited by free lists and card sorts found that both techniques were easily completed in a short amount of time and produced dependable and confirmable data.As a result, free lists and card sorts are two simple, yet powerful, trustworthy, and complimentary ethnographic elicitation techniques that can be used with preschool-age children to gain insight into their concepts related to food and the organization of these concepts.