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Instruments for Health Surveys in Children and Adolescents pp 209–230Cite as

Instruments for Assessing the Role of Commercials on Children’s Food Choices

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Part of the book series: Springer Series on Epidemiology and Public Health ((SSEH))

Abstract

Today’s children are highly exposed to media and hence also to food advertising. Various strands of research suggest that exposure to advertising may contribute to childhood overweight. However, previous research has largely been deficient in identifying the causal impact of advertising on children’s food choices. To address this, a toolbox of instruments related to the role of advertising in children’s food choice has been developed. This study presents three research modules that are designed to shed new light on the question of whether food advertising affects children’s dietary choices. The toolbox consists of three tools: (1) a children’s questionnaire on advertising literacy, (2) an experimental design on children food knowledge and preferences and (3) an experimental design on active food choice with food advertisement stimuli.

On behalf of the IDEFICS and I.Family consortia.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For instance, it is now legal for the sugar industry to sponsor a cooking show.

  2. 2.

    Advergames are company-sponsored video or computer games in which brand images and messages are embedded in the content.

  3. 3.

    The instruments reported in this chapter have been developed in the early 2010s; hence, we concentrated on television as major influencing media for this age group.

  4. 4.

    Developed by Jessica Dreas from the Bremen Institute for Prevention Research and Social Medicine (now: Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology—BIPS), Germany, in collaboration with Eva Ossiansson and Barbro Johansson from the Gothenburg Research Institute at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

  5. 5.

    Developed and carried out by Eva Ossiansson and Barbro Johansson from the Gothenburg Research Institute at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

  6. 6.

    The procedures validating the children’s questionnaire, and the experiment on children’s knowledge and preferences has been documented in detail in Gwozdz and Reisch (2011).

  7. 7.

    The findings are partially presented in Reisch et al. (2013).

  8. 8.

    The food cards are courtesy of the independent German governmental food expert service “AID Infodienst Verbraucherschutz, Ernährung, Landwirtschaft e.V.”, which kindly allowed us to copy the cards for the experiments. The food cards are professionally photographed and are, therefore, suitable for our purpose.

  9. 9.

    It is not possible to read the brand name, but if one knows the product, one is able to recognise the brand.

  10. 10.

    Obviously, we cannot control for previous experience and knowledge within the experiment. This can be partly compensated for at a later stage by connecting the collected experimental information to the rich IDEFICS study data. This even makes it possible to control for socio-demographic factors, media effects, and other lifestyle patterns or food habits, to mention just a few of the potentially influential factors.

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Acknowledgements

The development of instruments, the baseline data collection and the first follow-up work as part of the IDEFICS study (www.idefics.eu) were financially supported by the European Commission within the Sixth RTD Framework Programme Contract No. 016181 (FOOD).

We thank all families for participating in the extensive examinations of the IDEFICS study. We are also grateful for the support from school boards, headmasters and communities.

We are particularly thankful for the feedback received from the field teams in the participating IDEFICS countries, which helped us to develop and improve the instruments. We also thank the German AID Infodienst Verbraucherschutz, Ernährung, Landwirtschaft e.V. for permission to use their food cards. Finally, we wish to thank the children, parents and staff of the cooperating Danish–German school in Copenhagen, Denmark (St. Petri Dansk-Tysk Skole i København).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management, Society and Communication, Copenhagen Business School, Frederiksberg, Denmark

    Wencke Gwozdz & Lucia A. Reisch

  2. Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Giessen, Germany

    Wencke Gwozdz

Authors
  1. Wencke Gwozdz
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  2. Lucia A. Reisch
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Correspondence to Wencke Gwozdz .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Working Group Epidemiology of Demographic Change, Institute for Public Health and Nursing Research (IPP), University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Karin Bammann

  2. Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Lauren Lissner

  3. Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology—BIPS, Bremen, Germany

    Iris Pigeot

  4. Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology—BIPS, Bremen, Germany

    Wolfgang Ahrens

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Gwozdz, W., Reisch, L.A. (2019). Instruments for Assessing the Role of Commercials on Children’s Food Choices. In: Bammann, K., Lissner, L., Pigeot, I., Ahrens, W. (eds) Instruments for Health Surveys in Children and Adolescents. Springer Series on Epidemiology and Public Health. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98857-3_10

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