Paper Title
The Effects of the Parent Training Program for Obesity Reduction on Child Health Behaviors of Pre-School Children
Abstract
This Research aims to study the effects of the Parent Training Program for Obesity Reduction (PTPOR) on child health behaviors of pre-school children at the Samut-Songkhram kindergarten school, Samut-Songkhram province, Thailand. The objective of this research is to evaluate the effectiveness of the PTPOR on child health behaviors of the pre-school children. The conceptual framework of this study is developed on the basis of the Ecological Systems Theory (EST). This research is a quasi-experimental study. Participants were pre-school overweight and obese children and their parents. Forty one parent-child dyads were recruited into the program. Parents participated in two sessions including an educational session and a group discussion session. Research methodology uses Paired-Samples t-test to determine the difference between groups in the mean scores of the outcome variables of the children and parents. The research results show that there was no significant difference between child exercise health behaviors mean score at the baseline and finishing the program at the .05 level; however, mean score of the child exercise behavior was increase after finishing the program. Meanwhile, there was significant difference between child dietary health behavior mean score at the baseline and finishing the program at the .01 level (p = .001), mean score of the child dietary was increase after finishing the program.
Keywords- PTPOR, Child Exercise Behavior, Child Dietary Behavior, Pre-School Children.