Biomedical subjects

Isobel R Contento

Publications and source records attributed to Isobel R Contento.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Understanding the food choice process of adolescents in the context of family and friends.

PURPOSE: To understand from the adolescents' own perspective the decision-making processes they use to make food choices on an everyday basis and how they resolve their need for personal control over food choices with the values of family and peers. METHODS: A sample of 108 adolescents, aged 11-18 years, were individually interviewed. They were asked in a simulated task to choose a lunch from a menu of offerings and give reasons for their choices. In addition, open-ended questions probed for meal structures, dinners, perceptions of degree of choice, role of family and peers. Interviews were audio-taped, transcribed, coded, and analyzed for emerging themes. RESULTS: Primary food choice criteria were taste, familiarity/habit, health, dieting, and fillingness. Lunches had a definite structure, and lunches differed from dinners. The food choice process involved personal food decision-making rules such as trade-offs among choice criteria within a meal (e.g., taste for core items and health for secondary items), and between lunches with peers (taste) and family dinners (health); negotiation patterns with the family (autonomy versus family needs); and interactions with peers. CONCLUSIONS: The food choice process for most adolescents seemed to involve cognitive self-regulation where conflicting values for food choices were integrated and brought into alignment with desired consequences. Educators and practitioners should recognize the dilemmas adolescents face in making food choices and help them develop strategies for balancing less healthful with more healthful food items, through: (a) personal food decision-making rules, (b) effective negotiations with family members; and (c) appropriate interaction patterns with peers.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Relationship of cognitive restraint of eating and disinhibition to the quality of food choices of Latina women and their young children.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have examined the association of methods to control eating such as dietary restraint and disinhibition with weight and quantity of foods eaten. The purpose of this study was to examine the association of these constructs with quality of food choices for women and for their young children. METHODS: One hundred and eighty-seven Latina women completed the Eating Inventory, which measures cognitive dietary restraint and disinhibition, and reported on the food intakes of themselves and their 5- to 7-year-old child using a food frequency questionnaire. BMIs were also calculated. RESULTS: Cognitive restraint in mothers was generally associated with more healthful food choices of themselves and, to a lesser degree, of their children. Mothers' dietary disinhibition was associated with less healthful choices of themselves and their children. Mothers' control variables were not related to children's BMIs, except disinhibition was positively correlated with boys' BMI. Cognitive restraint in this low-income Latina population is thus associated with higher quality diets of self and child with no negative impact on children's BMIs whereas disinhibition is associated with overeating by self and child of high-fat, high-sugar foods. With the rise of obesity and with dietary quality of most Americans needing improvement, restraint may be a form of necessary cognitive self-regulation; and disinhibition or overeating is of greater concern.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Dietary patterns of reservation and non-reservation Native American youths.

OBJECTIVE: A leading cause of morbidity and mortality among Native Americans, cancer is largely preventable through lifestyle habits. Ranked high among those habits is a diet low in fat and high in fiber, fruits, and vegetables. Because Native Americans are not included in national nutritional monitoring systems, limited data exist on the cancer-related dietary habits of this population. To bridge this gap, this study measured the eating patterns of Native American youths in the northeastern United States. DESIGN: Cross-sectional. SETTING: Urban Indian centers and tribal and reservation settings located in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, and Maine. PARTICIPANTS: 191 self-identified Native American parents of children between 8 and 14 years of age. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Frequency of intake of foods recommended for inclusion in or omission from a diet to reduce cancer risk. RESULTS: Dietary patterns among Native American youths differed from a national US sample and varied between youths in reservation and non-reservation settings. CONCLUSIONS: A need exists for nutrition education and behavior change programs that reflect the culturally specific eating habits of the indigenous peoples of the Northeast. Ideally, developing nutrition curricula for specific communities will be done in cooperation with these communities and acknowledge barriers that may limit Native Americans' access to healthful foods.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

A media literacy nutrition education curriculum for head start parents about the effects of television advertising on their children's food requests.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate whether a media literacy nutrition education curriculum about the effects of television advertising on children's food choices influenced the behavior, attitudes, and knowledge of Head Start parents. SUBJECTS: Participants were a convenience sample of 35 parents from Head Start programs. DESIGN: This study used a pretest-posttest, comparison condition-intervention condition design. INTERVENTION: The 35 parents participated in both a four-week food safety curriculum (to serve as an educational placebo, comparison condition) that was followed immediately by a four-week media literacy nutrition education curriculum (intervention condition). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Evaluation measures included parents' understanding of the persuasive techniques of commercials; ability to distinguish between truths and claims in advertising; and outcome expectations, values, self-efficacy, and behaviors in relation to talking about television advertisements with children while co-viewing or in response to purchase requests in the grocery store. STATISTICAL ANALYSES: Paired t tests, analysis of covariance, and chi(2) analyses were used. RESULTS: The media literacy nutrition education intervention curriculum had significant effects in terms of Head Start parents' understanding television advertising (P<.001), attitudes about television advertisements (P<.001), outcome expectations (P<.05), values (P<.01), self-efficacy (P<.001), and TV mediation behaviors (P<.001), and understanding of, and ability to read, food labels (P<.001). CONCLUSIONS/APPLICATIONS: Results suggest that a media literacy nutrition education curriculum can be easily conducted by dietitians. Dietitians can modify the curriculum to teach parents how to critically analyze many other forms of media (supermarket magazines, brochures, newspapers, Web sites) that sell nutrition misinformation to the public.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Body image, weight, and food choices of Latina women and their young children.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate body image perceptions of women about themselves and their young children and their relationship to their food choices and those of their children. DESIGN: Descriptive and correlational study. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: 187 low-income, Latina women and their children, ages 5 to 7 years and 52% female, in New York City. VARIABLES MEASURED: Body image, food frequency, body mass index (BMI) of mothers and children, and food choice criteria of mothers for their children. ANALYSIS: Descriptive statistics and correlations. RESULTS: All of the women selected a relatively thin body image as the most desirable, attractive, fit, and healthy (about 2.5 on a scale of 1-7). Body size dissatisfaction or wish to be thinner was significantly associated with more healthful diets. Tertiles (thirds) of children at the 50th and 75th mean BMI-for-age percentiles were thought to be too thin to be attractive or healthy and the third of children with a mean above the 97th percentile only barely too large. Mothers with the highest body mass indices may make the least healthful choices for their children. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: These Latina women preferred a thin figure for themselves but a plumper figure for their children. Culturally competent nutrition education incorporating body image issues needs to assist mothers in understanding the health consequences of childhood obesity, recognizing when their children are overweight, and understanding the importance of healthful food choices for their children.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Review and analysis of evaluation measures used in nutrition education intervention research.

The purpose of this review is to provide a summary of the kinds of evaluation measures used in 265 nutrition education intervention studies conducted between 1980 and 1999 and an analysis of psychometric issues arising from such a review. The data are summarized in terms of tables for interventions with each of six key population groups: preschool children, school-aged children, adults, pregnant women and breast-feeding promotion, older adults, and inservice preparation of professionals and paraprofessionals. Measures evaluating knowledge and skills or behavioral capabilities were most widely used in studies with preschool, school-aged, and inservice populations (50%-85%) and less widely used in studies with the other groups, particularly breast-feeding promotion (5%). Measures of potential psychosocial mediators or correlates of behavior such as outcome expectancies, self-efficacy, or behavioral intention were used in 90% of behaviorally focused studies with school-aged children and in about 20% of studies with adults. Dietary intake measures were used in almost all studies, primarily food recalls, records, and quantitative food frequency questionnaires. Short frequency instruments involving only foods targeted in the intervention such as fruits and vegetables are increasingly being used. Measures of specific observable behaviors are also increasingly being used. Physiologic parameters were used in about 33% of behaviorally focused interventions with school-aged children and adults, 20% with older adults, and 65% with pregnant women and/or their infants. Criterion validity of newly developed intake instruments and content validity of instruments measuring mediating variables were reported in the majority (range 50%-90%) of studies. Reliability and stability of measures of mediating variables were reported in 50% to 75% of studies, with reliability coefficients mostly about .6 to .7. Two major conclusions from this review are that evaluation measures should be appropriate to the purpose, duration, and power of the intervention and that measures should have adequate validity and reliability in relation to both the outcomes and characteristics of the target audience. Major implications are that considerable preliminary work needs to be done before any intervention study to develop and test evaluation instruments so that they are appropriate and have adequate psychometric properties, and cognitive testing of published instruments with each new target audience is essential. We will then be better able to make judgments about the effectiveness of nutrition education.

Adolescent↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Using a theory-driven approach to design a professional development workshop.

The objective of this study was to show how a theory- driven approach to program planning was used to design and evaluate a professional development workshop. Our method was to demonstrate modeling of theory use as a teaching strategy. The Theory of Planned Behavior was used to structure all components of a 6-hour workshop. This workshop significantly increased participants' intention to use theory in designing programs (P <.0001). Educators can apply the methods demonstrated here to systematically use theory in the development, implementation, and evaluation of their workshops, staff training, and curricular materials for professionals and consumers.

Humans↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Application of the transtheoretical model to fruit and vegetable consumption among economically disadvantaged African-American adolescents: preliminary findings.

PURPOSE: To examine the application of the transtheoretical model (TTM) to fruit and vegetable consumption among economically disadvantaged African-American adolescents. METHODS: Scales for measuring decisional balance, situational self-efficacy, and processes of change for fruit and vegetable consumption were developed and pretested with 57 economically disadvantaged African-American adolescents. The scales and measures for assessing stages of change, demographic variables, and fruit and vegetable consumption were administered to a separate sample of 262 participants. t-tests for independent samples and analysis of variance were used to examine differences in TTM variables and fruit and vegetable consumption across stages of change. RESULTS: Two-factor solutions for decisional balance and processes of change and a three-factor solution for situational self-efficacy provided the best fit to the data. Alpha coefficients of reliability for the scales ranged from .77 (experiential change processes) to .91 (pros). Participants in action-maintenance stages evidenced higher pros, self-efficacy, and fruit and vegetable consumption and significantly lower cons than did participants in precontemplation and contemplation-preparation stages. Also, participants in action-maintenance stages used processes of change more frequently than did those in precontemplation-contemplation-preparation stages. The use of experiential and behavioral processes within these stages did not differ significantly, as posited. DISCUSSION: Observed differences in TTM variables and fruit and vegetable consumption by stage of change in this sample of economically disadvantaged African-American adolescents were consistent with theory and previous applications of the model to fruit and vegetable consumption in adults. With replication studies, the TTM may be appropriate for designing interventions to increase fruit and vegetable consumption among this population.

Adolescent↗