Emisiones de Gases de Efecto

The online and paper questionnaire required respondents (mothers/fathers/caregivers) to provide background information for themselves and their child, including nationality, ethnicity, age, self-reported height, weight and gender. Participants also completed questions asking about the number of meals they eat with their child during a typical week. After this, each participant completed the following questionnaires in the order presented below.

6.2.2.1. Parental Modelling of Eating Behaviours Scale (PARM: Palfreyman, Haycraft

& Meyer, 2012; Chapter 3; Appendix L)

The PARM is a self-report measure which consists of 15 items, designed to measure parental modelling of eating behaviours, with responses recorded using a 7-point Likert-type scale with three anchors (Strongly disagree – Neutral – Strongly Agree). The measure consists of three subscales: Verbal modelling (6 items; α = .87), Behavioural consequences (6 items; α = .82), and Unintentional modelling (3 items; α = .66). Higher scores indicate greater reported modelling. This measure has been successfully piloted in previous research with a maternal sample and showed adequate validity and reliability (Chapter 3 - Palfreyman et al., 2012).

6.2.2.2. Children’s Eating Behaviours Questionnaire (CEBQ: Wardle, Guthrie, Sanderson & Rapoport, 2001; Appendix R).

The CEBQ is a 35 item parental self-report measure, designed to assess eating styles in children using a five-point Likert frequency scale anchored ‘Never’ to ‘Always’. Individual CEBQ items were theoretically derived from research into the behavioural causes of obesity, and from parental reports of their children’s behaviours. The measure consists of eight dimensions of children’s eating behaviours, seven of which were used in this study: Food responsiveness (5 items; α = .70); Enjoyment of food (4 items; α = .85); Emotional over-eating (4 items; α = .63); Emotional under-over-eating (4 items; α = .74); Satiety responsiveness (5 items; α = .61); Slowness in eating (4 items; α = .51); and Food Fussiness (6 items; α = .90).

Higher scores indicate greater reports of each eating behaviour. The CEBQ has been found to have good internal validity (Webber, Cooke, Hill & Wardle, 2010) and has good test–retest reliability (Carnell & Wardle, 2007; Wardle, Guthrie, Sanderson & Rapoport, 2001).

6.2.2.3. Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q; Fairburn & Beglin, 1994; Appendix O)

The EDE-Q is a 36 item self-report version of the interview based Eating Disorder Examination (Cooper & Fairburn, 1987) which addresses the respondent’s eating psychopathology, focusing on the last four weeks. As the aim of the current study was to explore attitudes and concerns of mothers and fathers, a shortened version of the original instrument was used with the 13 item diagnostic section removed. This shortened version measures four aspects of eating disorder psychopathology: restraint (5 items; α = .85); eating concern (5 items; α = .85); body shape concern (8 items; α = .93); and body weight concern (5 items; α = .82), as well as having a total (global) score (α = .91). High scores on the EDE-Q

indicate more pathological eating attitudes and behaviours. Research has indicated that the EDE-Q is an effective screening tool for detecting eating disorders in various clinical populations (Black & Wilson, 1996; Carter, Aime & Mills, 2001; Fairburn & Beglin, 1994) and it has been found to be a reliable and valid measure in community samples (e.g., Fairburn

& Beglin, 1994; Mond, Hay, Rodgers, Own & Beumont, 2004).

6.2.2.4. Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ; Robinson, Mandleco, Olsen & Hart, 1995; Appendix Q).

The PSDQ assesses how often a parent (mother or father) exhibits certain behaviours towards their child. It has 32 items, which are separated into three subscales measuring authoritarian, authoritative, and permissive parenting. Items are answered using a 5-point scale with anchors ‘Never’ to ‘Always’. Higher scores correspond to greater alignment with each particular parenting style. For the purpose of this study, the physical coercion questions were removed due to ethical concerns about the content of the questions. The removal of these items echoes previous research using similar samples (e.g., Blissett & Haycraft, 2008). This shortened version (28 items) includes: 15 authoritative items (α = .89), reflecting reasoning/induction, warmth and support, democratic participation; 8 authoritarian items (α = .80) reflecting verbal and punitive strategies; and, 5 permissive items (α = .74) all reflecting indulgence and parental failure to follow through with disciplinary rules. The PSDQ has been shown to have adequate reliability and validity (Robinson et al., 2001; Russell et al., 2003).

6.2.3. Data analysis

A series of Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests established that all subscales were non-normally distributed and therefore non-parametric statistics were used, when possible, to test the study’s hypotheses. Due to the large age range of the children recruited for this study (18 months to 8 years), a series of preliminary Mann-Whitney U tests were conducted to test for differences between fathers of younger (below 5 years and11 months; n= 24) and older children (above 5 years and11 months; n = 12), and mothers of younger and older children, on the PARM. No significant differences were found between mothers or fathers of younger and older children on any of the subscales of the PARM (see Appendix W7). Further Mann Whitney U tests were then run to explore differences between fathers of boys and girls, and mothers of boys and girls, on the PARM subscales. While mothers were not found to differ significantly on any of the PARM subscales, fathers of boys (M = 5.24, Md = 5.50, n = 22) were found to report higher levels of verbal modelling (U = 79.000, z = -2.294, p = 0.022) than fathers of girls (M = 4.45, Md = 4.42, n = 14). No other significant differences on the PARM were found within this sample.

Following this a further series of two-tailed Mann-Whitney U tests were conducted to explore any differences between maternal and paternal scores on the PARM subscales (aim 1), and also any differences on the PSDQ, EDE-Q, CEBQ subscales and the frequency of meals mothers and fathers eat with their child. In order to test for any potential confounding variables, preliminary two-tailed Spearman’s rho correlations were conducted to determine the associations between paternal scores on the three PARM subscales with the three PSDQ subscales, the five EDE-Q subscales and the eight CEBQ subscales with child age, child BMI z scores, paternal age, paternal BMI and paternal years of post-16 education. The correlations were repeated with the maternal scores exploring the same variables. Maternal

and paternal BMI positively correlated with all five of the EDE-Q subscales (maternal sample; rs 0.40 to 0.52, p <.01: paternal sample; rs 0.44 to 0.62, p < .01) and child BMI z scores correlated with paternal scores on the EDE-Q eating concern (r = .41, p < .05) and weight concern (r = .41, p < .05) subscales and the overall EDE-Q global score (r = .39, p

<.05). Maternal post -16 education was found to be negatively related to maternal scores on the EDE-Q restraint subscale (r = -.46, p < .05). No other significant correlations were reported. Therefore, one-tailed partial correlations (due to there not being a non-parametric version of this statistical test), controlling for parental BMI and child z scores, were used to examine relationships between modelling and parental eating psychopathology. One-tailed Spearman’s rho correlations were used to examine the relationships between maternal and paternal modelling with the PSDQ and CEBQ subscales. Despite the number of associations, significance was set at p < 0.05, given the relatively modest sample size and the exploratory nature of this study. However, the results are interpreted cautiously.

6.3. Results