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Predicting Changes Across 12 Months in Three Types of Parental Support Behaviors and Mothers’ Perceptions of Child Physical Activity

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Annals of Behavioral Medicine

Abstract

Background

Parental support has been established as the critical family-level variable linked to child physical activity with encouragement, logistical support, and parent-child co-activity as key support behaviors.

Purpose

This study aims to model these parental support behaviors as well as family demographics as mediators of mothers’ perceptions of child physical activity using theory of planned behavior (TPB) across two 6-month waves of longitudinal data.

Method

A representative sample of Canadian mothers (N = 1253) with children aged 5 to 13 years of age completed measures of TPB, support behaviors, and child physical activity.

Results

Autoregressive structural equation models showed that intention and perceived behavioral control explained support behaviors, yet child age (inverse relationship) and family income were independent predictors. The three support behaviors explained 19–42 % of the variance in child physical activity between participants, but analyses of change showed much smaller effects.

Conclusions

Mothers’ support behaviors are related to perceived child physical activity, but support is dependent on perception of control, child age, and family income.

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Acknowledgments

RER is supported by a Canadian Cancer Society Senior Scientist Award and the Right to Give Foundation with additional funds from the Canadian Cancer Society, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research.

Authors’ Statement of Conflict of Interest and Adherence to Ethical Standards

Authors Rhodes, Spence, Berry, Deshpande, Faulkner, Latimer-Cheung, O’Reilly, and Tremblay declare that they have no conflict of interest on this paper. All procedures, including the informed consent process, were conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Behavioural Medicine Laboratory, Faculty of Education, University of Victoria, PO Box 3010 STN CSC, Victoria, BC, V8W 3N4, Canada

    Ryan E. Rhodes Ph.D.

  2. University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

    John C. Spence Ph.D. & Tanya Berry Ph.D.

  3. University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, AB, Canada

    Sameer Deshpande Ph.D.

  4. University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Guy Faulkner Ph.D.

  5. Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

    Amy E. Latimer-Cheung Ph.D.

  6. Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA

    Norman O’Reilly Ph.D.

  7. Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, Ottawa, ON, Canada

    Mark S. Tremblay Ph.D.

Authors
  1. Ryan E. Rhodes Ph.D.
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  2. John C. Spence Ph.D.
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  3. Tanya Berry Ph.D.
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  4. Sameer Deshpande Ph.D.
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Correspondence to Ryan E. Rhodes Ph.D..

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Rhodes, R.E., Spence, J.C., Berry, T. et al. Predicting Changes Across 12 Months in Three Types of Parental Support Behaviors and Mothers’ Perceptions of Child Physical Activity. ann. behav. med. 49, 853–864 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-015-9721-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-015-9721-4

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