Abstract
BackgroundOverweight and obesity in youth has increased dramatically. Therefore, overweight prevention initiatives should start early in life and target modifiable energy balance-related behaviours. Parental participation is often advocated as important for school-based interventions, however, getting parents involved in school-based interventions appears to be challenging based on earlier intervention experiences. The purpose of this study was to get insight into the determinants of and perspectives on parental participation in school-interventions on energy balance-related behaviours (physical activity, healthy eating, sedentary behaviours) in parents of ten- to twelve-year olds in order to develop an effective parental module for school-based interventions concerning energy balance-related behaviours.MethodsFour countries (Belgium, Hungary, Norway and Spain) conducted the focus group research based on a standardised protocol and a semi-structured questioning route. A variation in parental socio-economic status (SES) and parental school involvement was taken into account when recruiting the parents. The audio taped interviews were transcribed, and a qualitative content analysis of the transcripts was conducted in each country.ResultsSeventeen focus group interviews were conducted with a total of 92 parents (12 men, 80 women). Physical activity was considered to be a joint responsibility of school and parents, nutrition as parent's responsibility but supported by the school, and prevention of sedentary behaviours as parent's sole responsibility. Parents proposed interactive and practical activities together with their child as the best way to involve them such as cooking, food tasting, nutrition workshops, walking or cycling tours, sport initiations together with their child. Activities should be cheap, on a convenient moment, focused on their children and not on themselves, not tutoring, not theoretical, and school-or home-based.ConclusionsParents want to be involved in activities related to energy balance-related behaviours if this implies 'doing things together' with their child at school or at home.
Highlights
Overweight and obesity in youth has increased dramatically
Participants Seventeen focus group interviews were conducted with a total of 92 parents (12 men, 80 women; age = 41.1 ± 6.4 years; number of children = 2.2 ± 0.9), the number of participants per focus group ranged from two to ten
The present study identified numerous potential facilitators and barriers of parental participation in school-based interventions, which should be kept in mind when developing a new intervention
Summary
Overweight and obesity in youth has increased dramatically. overweight prevention initiatives should start early in life and target modifiable energy balance-related behaviours. Because parents are of major importance regarding their children’s nutrition, PA and SB [9,10,11], parents should be actively involved in school-based obesity prevention efforts [12]. School-based interventions that used direct methods to engage parents (e.g. parental education sessions, workshops) were more likely to report positive results compared with those studies that used more indirect methods (e.g. educational information materials, home work assignments). Interventions in which parents were engaged via their children were more likely to have positive findings Both reviews found that indirect methods were most commonly used to engage parents [13,16]. It is important to identify motivators, facilitators and barriers of parental involvement in school obesity prevention interventions (including both home-and school-based activities), but such studies are lacking
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