Parents' Perceptions of Influences on Child Eating Behaviors: An Attitudinal Approach

Abstract

A Healthy People 2000 coalition comprised of representatives from public schools, the local health department, the medical community, and local university wished to improve child dietary behaviors through changes in school food service and nutrition education. To achieve this goal, parental beliefs and attitudes about child dietary behaviors and school food service were assessed through qualitative and quantitative methods. This article describes the qualitative methods and results. Focus groups were conducted using attribution theory as a framework to structure the research questions and interview guide and to organize and interpret data. Focus group results suggest parents believe dietary habits have both global and specific effects on child health. In spite of expressing little control over children's eating habits, especially as children got older, parents felt schools could modify these habits through innovative, integrated nutrition education. They made suggestions as to how schools could offer healthy foods children would eat. Subjects emphasized that family support of nutrition education was essential for child dietary changes to become permanent. Insights obtained through the focus groups also were valuable in developing a questionnaire used to collect quantitative data.