The baseline characteristics of parents and African American girls in an online obesity prevention program: A feasibility study

The objective of this paper was to identify the relationships and associations between child and parent characteristics with child fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption in an online obesity prevention program for 8-10 year old African American girls. Girls and a parent (n = 342 child-parent pairs) in the southwestern US completed baseline data collection from 2012 to 2014. Girls and a parent completed self-report questionnaires online. Girls also completed two unannounced 24 hour telephone-based dietary recalls. The relationships of parent demographic characteristics, child FV intake, and psychosocial variables (child and parent) were examined by analysis of variance. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated to determine the relationships between psychosocial variables and child FV intake. Child FV intake was significantly greater in the highest household education (p = 0.001) and income groups (p = 0.004). FV home availability was higher with older parents (p = 0.007) and two-parent households (p = 0.033). Child FV intake was positively related to child FV preferences (p < 0.001), FV home availability (p = 0.022), and FV home accessibility (p = 0.002) but was negatively related to family barriers to FV consumption (p = 0.000). The study highlighted significant findings between child FV consumption and parent psychosocial variables and demographic characteristics that may offer insights for the design of effective obesity prevention interventions for 8-10 year old African American girls. ClinicaTrials.gov (NCT01481948).