QUANTITATIVE STUDY OF SPANISH PARENTS BELIEFS OF WHAT EFFECTS CHILDREN'S MENTAL PERFORMANCE

Objectives and Study: Parents have a direct influence on the food choices presented to children in the home. Thinking of what parents consider when choosing foood for their children it is important to know what factors they perceive to influence a child’s cognitive development and mental performance. Parents play a very important role in the development of children food choices and eating habits which may in turn influence children’s future health positively or negatively. The present study aims to quantitatively examine parents’ understanding of the factors influencing children’s mental performance. Methods: The study was conducted in Spain and participants were parents of children aged 4–10 years recruited through state elementary schools. A card sorting task was developed and used to conduct interviews with a total of 50 parents. Parents were asked about five different group of influencing factors: Biological, Educational, Social, Environmental and Psychological (18 factors in total), factors were based on evidence from scientific literature. Mental performance was defined in terms of Attention, Learning, Mood and Behavior Parents were asked to rate the effect of each factor as strong, moderate or no effects on child’s mental development in relation to each of the chosen aspects of mental performance. Responses were recorded manually, coded and group analysed using Friedman test and Cronbach Alpha test with the SPSS version 15.0. Results: The Friedman test for the general analysis show that factors that have a strong effect on mental performance for the participant were ‘‘School discipline’’, ‘‘Parents education level’’, ‘‘Class size’’, ‘‘Regularity of meals’’ and ‘‘Nutrition as a baby’’ for the four groups of cards colors sorting. Although Mood is considered lower than Attention, Learning and Behavior, all were taking from the strong effects answers groups. The card sorting colors game was tested in the study. Using the Cronbach Alpha test the questions’ homogenity, averaging all correlations between all items, were measured giving a mean value of 95,26/100. Conclusion: Spanish data reveal that parents perceive the Environmental, Social and Educational group of factors as having most influence on children’s mental performance. Mood is valued by the Spanish parents with less responses regarding the strengths compared with Attention, Learning and Behavior, which appear more homogeneous in relation to wich factors have an influence in mental performance. Disclosure of Interest: This study is part of the FP7 Project NUTRIMENTHE Grant agreement n8: 212652