Research reportSibling eating behaviours and differential child feeding practices reported by parents
Section snippets
Participants
In total 80 parents of at least two sibling children (N = 160) took part in this study. A screening question in the questionnaire asked parents ‘Have either of your children ever been hospitalised, if so please give details’. Data sets were excluded where parents answered yes to this question and reported the reason for hospitalisation to be food or eating related (e.g., Celiac Disease). Participation was not restricted according to parent or child weight.
Procedure
Five hundred questionnaires were
Descriptive statistics
The mean age of the participants was 35 years (SD = 4.95, range 22–49 years), 74 parents described themselves as White and 6 as non-White (2 Asian, 2 Indian, 1 Chinese, 1 other non-specified). The mean number of years that participants had spent in education after age 16 was 3.25 years (SD = 2.87). Using the Standard Occupation Classification (Office of National Statistics, 2000), 78 parents reported their occupation or previous occupation prior to motherhood and 2 mothers reported that they had
Discussion
The aims of this study were to establish whether there are significant intra-familial correlations for the feeding practices that parents report using with siblings in the same family, and to assess whether differences in parentally reported feeding practices are related to differences in sibling feeding problems. With the exception of perceived child overweight, there were significant intraclass correlations for all parental feeding practices and concerns measured using the Child Feeding
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