Methodological considerations for observational coding of eating and feeding behaviors in children and their families_2017.pdf

AbstractBackground: Behavioral coding of videotaped eating and feeding interactions can provide researchers with richobservational data and unique insights into eating behaviors, food intake, food selection as well as interpersonaland mealtime dynamics of children and their families. Unlike self-report measures of eating and feeding practices,the coding of videotaped eating and feeding behaviors can allow for the quantitative and qualitative examinationsof behaviors and practices that participants may not self-report. While this methodology is increasingly more common,behavioral coding protocols and methodology are not widely shared in the literature. This has important implications forvalidity and reliability of coding schemes across settings. Additional guidance on how to design, implement, code andanalyze videotaped eating and feeding behaviors could contribute to advancing the science of behavioral nutrition. Theobjectives of this narrative review are to review methodology for the design, operationalization, and coding ofvideotaped behavioral eating and feeding data in children and their families, and to highlight best practices.Methods: When capturing eating and feeding behaviors through analysis of videotapes, it is important for the studyand coding to be hypothesis driven. Study design considerations include how to best capture the target behaviorsthrough selection of a controlled experimental laboratory environment versus home mealtime, duration of videorecording, number of observations to achieve reliability across eating episodes, as well as technical issues in videorecording and sound quality. Study design must also take into account plans for coding the target behaviors, which mayinclude behavior frequency, duration, categorization or qualitative descriptors. Coding scheme creation and refinementoccur through an iterative process. Reliability between coders can be challenging to achieve but is paramount to thescientific rigor of the methodology. Analysis approach is dependent on the how data were coded and collapsed.Conclusions: Behavioral coding of videotaped eating and feeding behaviors can capture rich data “in-vivo” that isotherwise unobtainable from self-report measures. While data collection and coding are time-intensive the data yieldedcan be extremely valuable. Additional sharing of methodology and coding schemes around eating and feedingbehaviors could advance the science and field.