Parent-Reported Barriers and Enablers to Establishing Sun Safety Practices with Young Children in Australia

ABSTRACT

This study investigated parent-reported barriers and enablers to establishing sun safety practices with young children (0–4 years; N = 423) living in Australia. An online survey examined parent/child adherence to recommended sun safety practices and barriers and enablers to establishing sun safety practices. Adherence to different sun safety practices varied across age groups. Lack of child cooperation was the most commonly-endorsed barrier while child compliance was the most commonly-endorsed facilitator. Young children’s lack of cooperation with sun safety practices represents a major obstacle for parents. In conclusion, the development and testing of family-based intervention approaches to reduce child resistance and promote cooperation is warranted.

KEYWORDS:

• Sun safety
• child health
• parenting
• child behaviour

Acknowledgements

Our gratitude to Dr Sabine Baker for her contributions to questionnaire design, recruitment, and data collection for this study. Sincere thanks to the parents who participated.

Disclosure statement

The Parenting and Family Support Centre is partly funded by royalties stemming from published resources of the Triple P – Positive Parenting Program, which is developed and owned by The University of Queensland (UQ). Royalties are also distributed to the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences at UQ and contributory authors of published Triple P resources. Triple P International (TPI) Pty Ltd is a private company licensed by Uniquest Pty Ltd on behalf of UQ, to publish and disseminate Triple P worldwide. The authors of this paper are employees at UQ and have no share or ownership of TPI. Alina Morawska receives royalties from TPI. TPI had no involvement in the writing of this paper. Kavindri Kulasinghe and Alina Morawska are employees at UQ. Amy Mitchell is an honorary research fellow at UQ and was an employee at UQ at the time that this study was conducted.

Data availability statement

Ethics requirements restrict the use of this data to the current study only.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a Children’s Hospital Foundation Early Career Fellowship (AEM) and Translator Grant [award ref. no. 50223].