Project: Parenting Practices and Obesity in Low-Income African-American Preschoolers
Award Year: 2000
Amount of award, fiscal 2000: $260,000.00
Institution: University of Chicago
Principal Investigator: Anjali Jain
Status: Completed
Detailed Objective: This project refines and administers the Preschooler Feeding Questionnaire (PFQ), which is designed to identify specific parenting practices associated with preschool children becoming overweight. The target population of the refined PFQ is low-income African American mothers, whose 2- to 5-year-old children are at high risk for becoming overweight.

Little is known about the parenting practices that promote or prevent obesity in preschool children, which complicates the development of obesity prevention strategies. This project will analyze already-collected focus group data and conduct interviews in order to refine and administer the Preschooler Feeding Questionnaire (PFQ). The target population of the refined PFQ is low-income African American mothers of 2-5 year-olds inasmuch as African Americans as a group are at high risk for becoming overweight.

Topic: Data Collection and Methodology, Obesity
Output:
Boles, R., T. Nelson, L. Chamberlin, J. Valenzuela, S. Sherman, S. Johnson, and S. Powers. “Confirmatory Factor Analysis of the Child Feeding Questionnaire Among Low-Income African American Families of Preschool Children,” Appetite, Vol. 54, Issue 2, April 2010.
Jain, A., S. Sherman, L. Chamberlin, and R. Whitaker. "Mothers Misunderstand Questions on a Feeding Questionnaire," Appetite, Vol. 42, Issue 3, June 2004.
Powers, S. Parenting Practices and Obesity in Low-income African-American Preschoolers, Contractor and Cooperator Report No. 3, USDA, ERS, January 2005.
Powers, S., L. Chamberlin, K. van Schaick, S. Sherman, and R. Whitaker. “Maternal Feeding Strategies, Child Eating Behaviors, and Child BMI in Low-Income African-American Preschoolers,” Obesity, Vol. 14, No. 11, November 2006.