Quantifying parental preferences for interventions designed to improve home food preparation and home food environments during early childhood

Virudachalam, Senbagam; Chung, Paul J.; Faerber, Jennifer; Pian, Timothy M.; Thomas, Karen L.; Feudtner, Chris

doi:10.1016/j.appet.2015.11.007

Cited by 25 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Inspiration was the main subtheme arising from discussions regarding apps with recipe content. Research investigating parental preferences for a food provision program targeting young children found that participants with higher income, older participants, and partnered participants were interested in creative cooking without recipes [ 41 ]. The sample in this study was similarly biased, perhaps explaining the use of recipe content for inspiration.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Commercially Available Apps to Support Healthy Family Meals: User Testing of App Utility, Acceptability, and Engagement

Mauch¹,

Laws²,

Prichard³

et al. 2021

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth

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Background Parents juggling caregiving and paid employment encounter a range of barriers in providing healthy food to their families. Mobile apps have the potential to help parents in planning, purchasing, and preparing healthy family food. The utility and acceptability of apps for supporting parents are unknown. User perspectives of existing technology, such as commercially available apps, can guide the development of evidence-based apps in the future. Objective This study aims to determine the feasibility of existing commercially available apps for supporting the healthy food provision practices of working parents. Methods Working parents (N=133) were recruited via the web and completed a 10-item Capability, Opportunity, Motivation, and Behavior (COM-B) self-evaluation survey assessing their needs in relation to the provision of healthy family meals. A total of 5 apps were selected for testing, including a meal planning app, recipe app, recipe manager app, family organizer app, and barcode scanning app. Survey items were mapped to app features, with a subsample of parents (67/133, 50.4%) allocated 2 apps each to trial simultaneously over 4 weeks. A semistructured interview exploring app utility and acceptability and a web-based survey, including the System Usability Scale and the user version of the Mobile App Rating Scale, followed app testing. The interview data were analyzed using a theoretical thematic approach. Results Survey participants (N=133; mean age 34 years, SD 4 years) were mainly mothers (130/133, 97.7%) and partnered (122/133, 91.7%). Participants identified a need for healthy recipes (109/133, 82% agreed or strongly agreed) and time for food provision processes (107/133, 80.5%). Engagement quality was the lowest rated domain of the user version of the Mobile App Rating Scale across all 5 apps (mean score per app ranging from 3.0 to 3.7 out of a maximum of 5). The family organizer, requiring a high level of user input, was rated the lowest for usability (median 48, IQR 34-73). In the interviews, participants weighed the benefits of the apps (ie, time saving) against the effort involved in using them in determining their acceptability. Organization was a subtheme emerging from interviews, associated with the use of meal planners and shopping lists. Meal planners and shopping lists were used in time, while behavior was occurring. Conclusions Meal planning apps and features promoting organization present feasible, time-saving solutions to support healthy food provision practices. Attention must be paid to enhancing app automation and integration, as well as recipe and nutrition content, to ensure that apps do not add to the time burden of food provision and are supportive of healthy food provision behavior in time.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Commercially Available Apps to Support Healthy Family Meals: User Testing of App Utility, Acceptability, and Engagement

Mauch¹,

Laws²,

Prichard³

et al. 2021

JMIR Mhealth Uhealth

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Discrete choice experiments in the health field have largely been used to explore healthcare products and programs [30,53]. There are few applications of this method in the nutrition field [31,54,55], with those available commonly exploring characteristics of front-ofpacket labeling [56,57]. We have made a unique contribution to this literature by exploring food provision decisionmaking.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the influence of physical resources and social supports on primary food providers’ snack food provision: a discrete choice experiment

Johnson

Golley

Zarnowiecki

et al. 2020

Int J Behav Nutr Phys Act

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Background Snack eating occasions contribute approximately a third of children’s energy intake, with approximately half of all unhealthy foods consumed during snack times. Therefore, it is critical to understand the drivers of primary food providers’ snack provision. The study aims were to determine the relative importance of physical resources and social supports when primary food providers are choosing snacks to provide to their child, and to investigate how these attributes differ in social versus non-social occasions, and between subgroups of primary food providers based on socio-economic position. Methods Primary food providers of three to seven-year olds completed an online discrete choice experiment, by making trade-offs when completing repeated, hypothetical choice tasks on the choice of snacks to provide to their child in: 1) non-social and 2) social condition. Choice tasks included two alternatives consisting of varying attribute (i.e. factor) levels, and an opt-out option. The order of conditions shown were randomized across participants. Multinomial logit model analyses were used to determine utility weights for each attribute. Results Two-hundred and twenty-five primary food providers completed the study, providing 1125 choice decisions per condition. In the non-social condition, the top three ranked attributes were type of food (utility weight 1.94, p < 0.001), child resistance (− 1.62, p < 0.001) and co-parent support (0.99, p < 0.001). In the social condition, top ranking attributes were child resistance (utility weight − 1.50, p < 0.001), type of food (1.38, p < 0.001) and co-parent support (1.07, p < 0.001). In both conditions, time was not a significant influence and cost was of lowest relative importance. Subgroup analyses revealed cost was not a significant influence for families from higher socio-economic backgrounds. Conclusions Type of food, child resistance and co-parent support were of greatest relative importance in primary food providers’ snack provision decision-making, regardless of social condition or socio-economic position. In designing future interventions to reduce unhealthy snacks, researchers should prioritize these influences, to better support primary food providers in changing their physical and social opportunity. Trial registration Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry no. ACTR N12618001173280

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“…Virudachalam et al . 2016). As such, digital health interventions offer a promising way to intervene with parents and caregivers to support their child feeding practices.…”

Section: Sharing Information With Familiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Child Feeding Guide: A digital health intervention for reducing controlling child feeding practices and maternal anxiety over time

2020

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Fussy eating and food refusal are common in young children. These behaviours can contribute to anxiety or concern in parents and caregivers, who have called for credible support to help them navigate the challenges of feeding young children. Given recent increases in technology, and use of the Internet as a trusted source of parenting support, the Child Feeding Guide digital health intervention was created to provide evidence‐based support to parents and caregivers to help them to feed children and establish healthy eating habits from the early years. An evaluation was conducted with 25 mothers (with a child aged 6 months to 4 years) who used the Child Feeding Guide website/app over 4 weeks. Mothers provided information about their feeding practices and anxiety levels at baseline, and again 4 weeks later, and answered questions regarding the acceptability and use of the digital support resource. Significant decreases were seen in maternal anxiety and in maternal use of pressure to eat and restriction of food from children for weight reasons. Mothers reported that the Child Feeding Guide was easy to use, that they valued its credibility and reassurances, and that its content helped them to better understand their child’s eating behaviour. These promising findings suggest that naturalistic use of a digital health intervention could contribute to reductions in mothers’ use of controlling feeding practices and levels of anxiety. Such findings are important for supporting the development of healthy eating habits in young children and are likely to be relevant to health and childcare professionals.

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Quantifying parental preferences for interventions designed to improve home food preparation and home food environments during early childhood

Cited by 25 publications

References 33 publications

Commercially Available Apps to Support Healthy Family Meals: User Testing of App Utility, Acceptability, and Engagement

Commercially Available Apps to Support Healthy Family Meals: User Testing of App Utility, Acceptability, and Engagement

Understanding the influence of physical resources and social supports on primary food providers’ snack food provision: a discrete choice experiment

The Child Feeding Guide: A digital health intervention for reducing controlling child feeding practices and maternal anxiety over time

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