How do parents react to receiving feedback about their children’s weight?

This question was tackled by JRP alumna Beata Kovács and her team in a recently published article in BMC Public Health. Beata was part of the JRP cohort in 2013-14, where she worked on the project “Conceptualizations of mental health across Europe”, supervised by Sanne Lamers. During the JRP Conference in 2016, she already gave an insight into her work investigating parents’ views on the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP), a child weight monitoring system in England. Now, Beata continues her research on this topic.

As part of the NCMP, children’s overweight levels are assessed and sent to parents in result letters. How do parents react to this feedback, and what are their views of the NCMP in general?

To explore these questions, Beata and her team conducted a qualitative analysis of parents’ views as discussed in online parenting message boards. They identified three main topics: 1) whether the feedback provided by the NCMP was judged as legitimate, 2) whether the programme was seen as an unnecessary intrusion or a helpful evidence-based intervention, 3) positive and negative aspects of discussing weight results with their children. Most importantly, parents generally provided both supporting and opposing arguments for all three themes.

We are excited to see that Beata’s research brings attention to such an important topic, and that it will contribute to further shape policies tackling child obesity.

(Image: Beata Kovács, pictured at the JRP Conference in 2015)