Supplementary information files for "The Family Mealtime Structure Questionnaire: Development and associations with child temperament, eating behaviour, parental feeding practices and food intake"

Supplementary files for article "The Family Mealtime Structure Questionnaire: Development and associations with child temperament, eating behaviour, parental feeding practices and food intake"<br><br>This study aimed to a) develop a new measurement tool (The Family Mealtime Structure Questionnaire; FMSQ) to assess family mealtime structure at home and b) use the new measure to validate and explore relationships between mealtime structure and young children's temperament, eating behaviour, parental feeding practices and food intake. While existing research has explored aspects of mealtime structure, this is typically measured by individual questions or via one subscale within a broader questionnaire and there has been a call for a comprehensive assessment tool which captures specific multi-dimensional elements of mealtime structure to further our understanding. Mothers (N = 356) with a child 2-7-years-old completed the FMSQ alongside validated questionnaires assessing child temperament, parental feeding practices, child eating behaviour, and parent and child food intake. Exploratory Factor Analyses generated a five-factor model comprising: Eating together; Consistent mealtime settings; Involvement in mealtime preparation; Parental control; and, Distraction during mealtimes. Parents who reported greater instances of involving children in meal preparation, using a consistent mealtime setting, and eating together generally reported lower use of ‘coercive control’ feeding practices (e.g. restriction for health reasons, offering food as reward) and greater use of ‘autonomy promoting’ (e.g., nutrition education) and ‘structure’-based (e.g., monitoring, modelling) feeding practices. These parents were also more likely to report having children who were less fussy and who ate more fruits and vegetables, and fewer sweet foods (i.e. cakes/biscuits, sweets/chocolates). Findings further showed that families eating together less often were more likely to have more emotional children and children with lower levels of self-regulation. The results of this novel study highlight a range of factors that are associated with the use of structure around mealtimes and are valuable for supporting our understanding of when family mealtime structure could potentially be a suitable target of interventions to support healthy child development.<br><br>© The Authors. CC-BY-NC 4.0