Parents’ behavioral intentions to improve child dietary intake and physical activity levels : the mediating role of parents’ ability to enact change

The present study investigated several pathways of a new theoretical model for understanding how parents engage in health behavior change related to their child’s health. Specifically, the present study examined the independent effects of parents’ nutrition knowledge, stress and child body mass index on parents’ intentions to change their child’s dietary intake and physical activity, through a mediating factor, the ability to enact change (i.e., self-efficacy, self-control, support from coparent), that may explain the relationship between nutrition knowledge and stress on parents’ intentions. In addition, parents’ feeding style (e.g., authoritative vs authoritarian) was examined as a moderator of the relationship between parents’ ability to enact change and their intentions. Participants were a sample of 329 parents (M [subscript age] = 33.84, SD [subscript age] = 5.68) of children ages 3 to 8 years. Results from a path analysis in a structural equation modeling framework indicate that parents’ stress negatively affects perceptions of their ability to enact change but positively influences their intentions to change their child’s physical activity levels. Moreover, parents with an overweight or obese child were more inclined to have intentions to change their child’s dietary intake and physical activity levels. Nutrition knowledge was largely unrelated to the constructs of interest. No significant indirect effects emerged using parents’ ability to enact change and moderation analyses revealed no difference in the strength of the relationship between parents’ ability to enact change and their intentions by parents’ feeding style. These findings suggest that contextual factors, such as parents’ perceived stress, is an important factor to consider to understand parents perceived abilities as well as their intentions to change