Research Article
Mok WK, Ip TT, Cheuk R and Lau
Abstract
Objective: In this study, the aim was to explore the relationships of kindergarten children’s BMI amongst parental factors such as parental BMI, body dissatisfaction, parental dietary restraint, child weight concern and child weight-focused restrictive feeding. Method: 466 kindergarten students’ parents were participated in this study. A self-administrated questionnaire was distributed to parents. Independent t-test, one way ANOVA and Pearson’s correlation were performed to analyze the relationships amongst different factors contributing to children’s BMI. Results: 30% parents and 37% children were found either overweight or obese. The six pathways in the proposed model were all significantly correlated. It was found that parental BMI significantly correlated with body dissatisfaction [r (466)=0.282, p<0.001], which was then associated strongly with parental dietary restraint [r (466)=0.715, p<0.001] and weakly with child weight concern [r (466)=0.146, p=0.002]. The child weight-focused restrictive feeding practice was moderately correlated with both parental dietary restraint [r (466)=0.360, p<0.001] and child weight concern [r (466)=0.320, p<0.001], and then significantly correlated with child BMI [r (466)=0.121, p=0.009]. Conclusion: The results of this study confirmed the presence of upward trend of childhood obesity in Hong Kong. In addition, parental body dissatisfaction was found to be a significant factor to determine parental dietary restraint, which was associated with child weight-focused restrictive feeding and finally affected child BMI.