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"You ate all that!?": caretaker-child interaction during children's assisted dietary recall interviews
1Center for Child Health Outcomes and Trauma Services, Children's Hospital and Health Center, San Diego, USA. Esobo@chsd.org
Insights
Guardian presence in young children's dietary recalls offers some benefits but children are knowledgeable and can assert independence. Guardian assistance may not always improve data accuracy in child nutrition research.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Nutrition
- Child Psychology
- Research Methodology
Background:
- Dietary recalls in young children typically involve guardian presence.
- The impact of guardian involvement on data accuracy remains unclear.
- Assumptions about the necessity of guardian presence may be inaccurate.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine guardian-child interactions during diet recall interviews.
- To assess the extent of children's knowledge about their own diets.
- To understand how guardian participation influences data collection in pediatric nutrition studies.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of transcribed guardian-assisted dietary recalls from 34 children (aged 7-11).
- Study conducted within the Olestra Post-Marketing Surveillance Study (OPMSS) at the San Diego site.
- Qualitative examination of interactions, child knowledge, and guardian assistance.
Main Results:
- Guardians expanded the breadth of dietary data collected.
- Children demonstrated significant knowledge of their own diets.
- Children sometimes rejected guardian input, and guardians often couldn't assist children's recall.
- Interactions revealed cultural norms and power dynamics, complicating data classification.
Conclusions:
- While guardians contribute some data, children are often knowledgeable about their food intake.
- Guardian assistance does not consistently improve recall accuracy and can introduce complexity.
- Dietary recall methods involving children may need adjustments to account for child autonomy and cultural factors.
Abstract:
Young children's dietary recalls generally are conducted with a guardian present, but how this contributes to data accuracy is unclear. Furthermore, some assumptions underlying the preference for guardian presence may be unfounded. To investigate the range of guardian-child interactions within the diet recall setting, we examined transcriptions of guardian-assisted recalls conducted with 34 children aged 7-11 whose households were enrolled with the San Diego site of the Olestra Post-Marketing Surveillance Study (OPMSS). Although guardians did add to the breadth of data collected, children were quite knowledgeable about their diets. Moreover, they sometimes rejected guardian suggestions, and guardians generally could not provide assistance when children requested it. Guardian-child negotiations reflected cultural understandings regarding children, caretaking, and guardian-child power structures as well as food, and sometimes interviewers had to make very subjective data classification decisions. Suggestions for improving dietary recall methods are provided. Findings are relevant for other research methods involving children.