About Your Child's Eating: factor structure and psychometric properties of a feeding relationship measure

Conducted exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis of the About Your Child's Eating (AYCE) inventory with 763 parents. Parent subjects were drawn from a community study of families with physically healthy and chronically ill children between 8 and 16 years of age. Three correlated factors were identified: Child Resistance to Eating, Positive Mealtime Environment, and Parent Aversion to Mealtime. The internal consistency of the factors remained satisfactory across all examined demographic subgroups. Evidence for convergent validity was found by comparing the AYCE factors to higher order factors of the Family Environment Scale. Empirically derived clinical range cut-off scores are presented. Results support the AYCE as a psychometrically sound measure of the parent-child feeding relationship for school-aged children.