Background: Interactions between parents and children in regard to food are an important part of the development of food preferences and intake patterns for children. The measurement of this complex and multidimensional construct is very challenging.Methods: This article examines the current status of measurement in this domain in a selective review, considers qualitative input from parents and adolescents in an empirical examination of the topic, and makes concrete recommendations for the future.Results: Qualitatively, there were important differences between what the adolescents reported that their parents did to impact their eating habits, what parents of younger children report they currently do, and what researchers typically measure in research on parental feeding practices.Conclusions: On the basis of these empirical findings and our review of the literature, we recommend that food parenting be measured on three levels: Feeding styles (e.g., authoritative), food parenting practices (e.g., restriction), and specific feeding behaviors (e.g., putting food out of the child's reach). Specific recommendations for future study are given for each level of measurement.

No abstract

Objective: Whether weight bias occurs in the graduate school admissions process is explored here. Specifically, we examined whether body mass index (BMI) was related to letter of recommendation quality and the number of admissions offers applicants received after attending in-person interviews. Design and Methods: Participants were 97 applicants to a psychology graduate program at a large university in the United States. They reported height, weight, and information about their applications to psychology graduate programs. Participants' letters of recommendation were coded for positive and negative statements as well as overall quality. Results: Higher BMI significantly predicted fewer post-interview offers of admission into psychology graduate programs. Results also suggest this relationship is stronger for female applicants. BMI was not related to overall quality or the number of stereotypically weight-related adjectives in letters of recommendation. Surprisingly, higher BMI was related to more positive adjectives in letters. Conclusions: The first evidence that individuals interviewing applicants to graduate programs may systematically favor thinner applicants is provided here. A conscious or unconscious bias against applicants with extra body weight is a plausible explanation. Stereotype threat and social identity threat are also discussed as explanations for the relationship between BMI and interview success.Obesity (2013) 21, 918-920.

The association between personality and organizational citizenship behaviors is rarely examined in student populations. The present research tested the hypothesis that conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism predict unique variance in academic citizenship attitudes. In the first study, 270 college students completed an online questionnaire assessing their personality and academic citizenship attitudes. The results confirmed the hypothesis. In Study 2, we also tested the hypothesis that academic citizenship attitudes mediate the association between personality and citizenship behavior. Participants (n = 50) completed the online questionnaire. At a later session, they were asked to engage in an extra-role helping behavior after completing the assigned task. The results showed that general conscientiousness was associated with citizenship behavior, but academic conscientiousness attitudes mediated this association.

The primary purposes of the present study were to examine age differences in adaptive decision making and to evaluate the role of numeracy in mediating the relationship between age and adaptive decision making. Adaptive decision making was assessed by the Cups task (Levin, Weller, Pederson, & Harshman, 2007). Forty-six younger (18 to 24 years old) and 37 older adults (61 to 89 years old) completed the Cups task. In addition, the Numeracy Scale (Lipkus, Samsa, & Rimer, 2001) was used to measure individual numeric ability. Adaptive decision making was operationalized by the Expected Value sensitivity (i.e., the product of probability and outcome magnitudes) across the gain and the loss domains. Older adults had significantly lower Expected Value sensitivity than young adults. In addition, older adults demonstrated significantly lower numeracy than younger adults. Finally, numeracy partially mediated the relationship between age and adaptive decision making. It is suggested that older adults’ declined decision making may be partially due to their declined numeric abilities. Implications were discussed in numeracy education and public policies concerning older adults.