Measuring the Physical Activity Practices Used by Parents of Preschool Children

Introduction: Parents play a critical role in shaping children's attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, including those around physical activity and inactivity. Our ability to identify which practices effectively promote children's physical activity and limit inactivity is limited by existing measurement instruments. This project will present a newly developed physical activity parenting practices survey, the psychometric properties of this survey's scales, and their association with child physical activity and screen time behaviors. Methods: A sample of 324 parents with 2- to 5-yr-old children from central North Carolina completed a series of questionnaires, including this newly developed survey of physical activity parenting practices. Child physical activity was assessed by ActiGraph GT3X accelerometers and parent report. Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify physical activity parenting practice constructs, and Pearson correlation was used to explore relations between constructs and child physical activity. Results: Fourteen parent practices used to either control or support children's physical activity or screen time were identified. Limits on screen time (r = -0.44), use of screen time to control behavior (r = 0.23), exposure to TV (r = 0.33), and parent modeling of physical activity (r = 0.37) were all significantly associated with children's TV viewing. Use of physical activity to control child behavior was significantly associated with time spent outside (r = 0.15) and minutes of moderate or vigorous physical activity (r = 0.16). Several supportive practices were associated with time outside (+) and TV time (-). Conclusions: Results provide support for this new measure of physical activity parenting practices and identify several practices that are clearly associated with child physical activity.