Review and meta-analysis for the caregiver's feeding styles questionnaire administered to low-income families

Authors

Briana A. Lopez, University of North Florida
Jody S. Nicholson, University of North FloridaFollow
Rayna N. Garcia, University of North Florida
Heather R. Johnson, University of North Florida
Thomas G. Power, Department of Human Development, Washington State University, PO Box 644852, Pullman, WA 99164, USA. Electronic address: tompower@wsu.edu.
Sheryl O. Hughes, USDA/ARS Children's Nutrition Research Center, Baylor College of Medicine, 1100 Bates Avenue, Houston, TX 77030, USA. Electronic address: shughes@bcm.edu.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-1-2022

Abstract

The Caregiver's Feeding Styles Questionnaire (CFSQ) is a well-established measure which uses scores along two dimensions of demandingness and responsiveness to classify low-income parents into one of four feeding style typologies (authoritative, authoritarian, indulgent, and uninvolved; Hughes, et al., 2005). The measure is widely used by researchers to explore the relationship between feeding style and child weight status but has not been evaluated comprehensively in a review or meta-analysis. The aims of this study were to 1) compare established median cutoffs for responsiveness and demandingness in parent feeding (k = 5; see Hughes et al., 2012) to current median splits along these two dimensions for a larger sample of articles (k = 19) and 2) evaluate the relation between children's BMI, demandingness and responsiveness, and parent feeding style categories. Results indicated that the cutoffs for responsiveness and demandingness initially established based on five studies of low-income families did not differ significantly with the addition of 19 studies. Child BMI z-scores (k = 8) were above average for all four parent feeding style categories and highest for indulgent parents, which was consistent with the literature outlining low-income children at higher risk for obesity and children of indulgent parents being particularly at risk. While heterogeneity of samples should be considered, study results suggested that the CFSQ distribution for responsiveness and demandingness was relatively generalizable across low-income samples, though heterogeneity was higher among caregiver's feeding style categories. Furthermore, the study confirmed that parent feeding styles were related to child weight status in a meaningful way, but all children in these low-income samples, on average, were heavier than their same-aged peers across all parent feeding styles.

Publication Title

Eating behaviors

Volume

46

First Page

101659

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1016/j.eatbeh.2022.101659

PubMed ID

35964363

E-ISSN

1873-7358

Language

eng

Citation Information

Lopez, Briana A.; Nicholson, Jody S.; Garcia, Rayna N.; Johnson, Heather R.; Power, Thomas G.; and Hughes, Sheryl O., "Review and meta-analysis for the caregiver's feeding styles questionnaire administered to low-income families" (2022). UNF Faculty Research and Scholarship. 3193.
https://digitalcommons.unf.edu/unf_faculty_publications/3193