The Relationships between the Home Food Environment and Weight Status among Children and Adolescents, ages 6-17 years

Objectives: To develop and test a home food checklist that parents can use to assess the availability and visibility of home healthy and unhealthy foods. Methods: The in-house assessment was conducted in the homes of 82 parents and their children (9.8 ± 2.6 years). The Home Food Checklist was completed by both parents and researchers, and tested for criterion and construct validity. The agreement between researchers and parents (for criterion validity) was examined using kappa statistics. Results: The checklist showed acceptable criterion validity (Kappa statistics: 0.41-1.00) between researchers’ and parents’ assessments for majority of tested items. Substantial construct validity was demonstrated by significant and positive correlations between availability scores of food items on the checklist and self-report 30-day availability scores of corresponding food items in the home (Ps<0.05). Conclusions: The checklist is a useful tool that can be effectively completed by the parents to assess the home food environment.