Parents’ perceptions of reasons for excess weight loss in obese children: a peer researcher approach

Abstract

BackgroundThis study reports on the process of conducting participatory research by training peer researchers to conduct interviews and analyse data collected with parents of overweight children. The methodology was chosen as a means of (a) encouraging participation among a hard-to-engage group (i.e., parents of overweight children), and (b) generating novel insights and challenging academic/health professional assumptions through the involvement of parents in the interpretation of findings.MethodsFour parents (all female) were recruited as peer researchers and trained in research processes, ethics, and interview skills over three half-day workshops. The intended interviewees were parents of children identified as obese through the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) at the start of primary school (age 4–5) but who had lost their excess weight by age 10–11; little is currently known about how this excess weight loss is achieved. Interviews were conducted by peer researchers, transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically by both peer- and university-based investigators.ResultsThe peer researchers felt confident to conduct interviews after three training sessions. Recruitment of interviewees was challenging, resulting in only four volunteers (all mothers) over a 5-month period; thus peer researchers were only able to conduct one interview each. All interviews were considered good quality in comparison to those conducted by Masters-level research assistants. The process of co-analysis resulted in a change in emphasis from that initially generated by the university research team; the role of health professionals in weight management was de-emphasised, and the importance of ‘not singling out’ overweight children accentuated. Given the limited number of interviews, the results of the study are only provisional but resulted in three themes: Whole Family Action, Support (and lack of support), and Protecting Childhood.ConclusionsTraining peer researchers to conduct and analyse interviews was feasible within a short period of training. Peer researchers found the experience interesting, informative and worthwhile. Two of the four volunteered to be involved in a related study 12 months later. The different perspective brought through co-analysis suggests that this approach to conducting participatory research may be a useful means of working with the public to generate new ideas to tackle intransigent issues.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s40900-017-0072-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Short-Term Predictors for Weight Correction Success of the First Paediatric Weight Correction Programme in Children’s Clinical University Hospital in Riga

“…There was even a lower mean baseline z-BMI value than in our sample described in The Evidence Report and Systematic Review for the US Preventive Services Task Force [10]. A child’s high z-BMI was a positive predictor for parents to recognize their child was overweight [2,22,23].…”

Using narrative messages to improve parents' experience of learning that a child has overweight

“…The low response rate attained in the quasi-experimental trial highlights that future work to assess the effectiveness of the narratives, or other resources to support parents alongside the NCMP, require extensive work to increase parent interest and engagement in this topic and related research. Research into childhood overweight involving parents (particularly those children with overweight) often has low recruitment rates, reflective of the sensitive nature of this topic (Falconer et al 2014;Gillison et al 2017;Sallis et al 2019).…”

“…Using narrative messages constructed from previously collected parent accounts (Gillison et al 2014;Gillison et al 2017), the present study followed a mixed-methods approach combining (i) qualitative, semi-structured interviews of parents' responses to the narrative messages, and (ii) a quasi-experimental trial to investigate the feasibility, acceptability and promise of enclosing the narrative message cards with standard feedback to parents whose children were categorised as having overweight or obesity (termed very overweight in communications to parents) through the NCMP.…”

“…The interviews followed a schedule constructed based on past research exploring the impact of narrative messages and health information resources (Grey et al 2018) and research with parents around issues of childhood obesity and NCMP activities (Gillison et al 2017). Questions were refined through pilot testing.…”

“…The narrative messages were based on real-life accounts obtained from parents involved in previous research studies relating to the NCMP (Gillison et al 2014;Gillison et al 2017).…”