Development of a Measure to Assess Parent Perceptions of Barriers to Child Weight Management.

BACKGROUND

Families face many barriers related to creating or maintaining a healthy lifestyle, which likely contributes to the prevalence of childhood obesity in the United States; however, no measure currently exists to examine these barriers. This study developed a quantitative measure of parents' perceptions of barriers to family healthy lifestyle.

METHODS

Parents of children between the ages of 7-17 were recruited using Amazon Mturk (n = 812). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and preliminary convergent validity analyses were conducted.

RESULTS

Four factors emerged in the final measure: Parent Disengagement, Cost and Built Environment, Lack of Family Support, and Family Time Constraints, with the final 19-item measure having good initial psychometric properties, including reliability and validity.

CONCLUSIONS

Future research is needed to examine whether this measure may be used in clinical practice to identify barriers to a healthy family lifestyle, to tailor interventions for families.