Development of a new questionnaire to assess the links between children's self-regulation of eating and related parental feeding practices

Abstract

Young children have an innate ability to self-regulate food intake, driven primarily by hunger and satiety cues, but this ability tends to decrease during early childhood. The study aimed to first examine the development and initial validation of a self-report questionnaire suitable for French samples that assess two dimensions of children's self-regulation of eating (eating in the absence of hunger, poor eating compensation abilities) and potential related parental feeding practices. The second aim was to assess the links between children's self-regulation of eating and parental feeding practices as well as the links between children's self-regulation and children's body mass index. An initial 28-item questionnaire was developed. It included items related to the child's eating in the absence of hunger and eating compensation, which were selected mainly from interviews conducted with 45 mothers, and items related to parental feeding practices selected from existing tools. This questionnaire was then completed by 793 parents. A 21-item questionnaire was validated using a confirmatory factor analysis that showed satisfying fit indices. The structural equation modeling indicated that the use of food as reward was positively associated with eating in the absence of hunger, whereas parental awareness of children's cues was negatively associated with both children's eating in the absence of hunger and poor eating compensation ability. Interestingly, positive associations between eating in the absence of hunger and child's BMI, and between poor eating compensation ability and child's BMI were reported. The current study offered an initial validation of a new questionnaire that combines parental feeding practices and constructs involved in children's self-regulation of eating. Further studies are needed to disentangle these links and their directionality as well as the associations with children's body mass index.