Attachment styles were not targeted by the tools for several reasons. First, Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated the stronger relevance of parenting styles as compared with attachment styles in dynamics influencing discussion motivations. In Study 1, attachment styles did not demonstrate significance with the model aims, while in Study 2, parenting styles were as or more strongly associated than attachment styles with the parenting framed messages. Second, short-term and longer-term behaviors linked with parenting styles are theoretically more malleable than those linked with anxious and avoidant attachment styles. Messages framed according to a parenting style will be relatively easier to deliver, more accepted by a child, and more likely to have the intended effects of promoting the style-associated responses by the child. Study 3 tested the efficacy of two discussion tools, one for promoting discussions of unhealthy eating and one for promoting discussions of marijuana use, vertical grow weed each of which incorporated the respective authoritative message from Study 2. These tools were tested against a comparison communication that provided educational information about the harms of sedentary behavior. Images used in the three tools were paralleled to portray a range of parent-child relationships , ethnicity , facial expressions , and activity .
The efficacy of the tools was tested by examining their immediate impact on the cognitive factors of perceived effectiveness; perceived interpretability; motivations to address the behavior; discussion self-efficacy; coherence in understanding; discussion intentions; and discussion willingness. Efficacy was also tested by examining the impact of the tools on behaviors of tool downloads for later use; reports on discussions of the behaviors four weeks later; and willingness to pay for the tool. Willingness to pay for a product is proven to be a strong predictor of whether or not a participant would bemotivated to use a product by purchasing it . This measure has been used to provide knowledge through customer responses about the potential purchase of a product, success of the design, and pricing decisions . It provided us with information on whether our tools were effective enough that participants would be willing to pay money to utilize it. This study furthered the examination of moderating influences of parenting style on tool conditions of unhealthy eating, marijuana use, and sedentary behavior, and cognitive and behavioral factors. The discussion tools of unhealthy eating and marijuana use included the authoritative parenting-framed message, making it essential to test if the parents that identified as being authoritarian or permissive would find these tools effective as well .
It further explored parental views about discussing unhealthy eating and marijuana use with their children and then tested the effects of discussion tools on parent’s conversations with their children about these health risk behaviors. Participants included parents living in the United States who have children ages 10 to 17 years old. The study consisted of an initial survey, and then a follow-up survey four weeks later . The study aims were to: test the effects of the unhealthy eating discussion tool, marijuana use discussion tool, and sedentary behavior tool on perceived effectiveness, perceived interpretability, motivations to address the behavior, self-efficacy of unhealthy eating and marijuana use, coherence of unhealthy eating and marijuana use, intentions of unhealthy eating, marijuana use, and sedentary behavior, willingness of unhealthy eating and marijuana use, tool download, discussion behavior of unhealthy eating, marijuana use, and sedentary behavior, tool use, and willingness to pay for the tool; and test the moderation effects of authoritative parenting style, authoritarian parenting style, and permissive parenting style on tool conditions of unhealthy eating, marijuana use, and sedentary behavior and the dependent measures of perceived effectiveness, perceived interpretability, motivations to address the behavior, self-efficacy of unhealthy eating and marijuana use, coherence of unhealthy eating and marijuana use, intentions of unhealthy eating, marijuana use, and sedentary behavior, willingness of unhealthy eating and marijuana use, tool download, discussion behavior of unhealthy eating, marijuana use, and sedentary behavior, tool use, and willingness to pay for the tool.
For Aim 1, we tested hypotheses that: the unhealthy eating discussion tool will lead to higher perceived effectiveness, higher perceived interpretability, higher motivations to address the behavior, higher self-efficacy of unhealthy eating, higher coherence of unhealthy eating, higher intentions of unhealthy eating, higher willingness of unhealthy eating, and higher willingness to pay for the tool compared to the sedentary behavior tool; the marijuana use discussion tool will lead to higher perceived effectiveness, higher perceived interpretability, higher motivations to address the behavior, higher self-efficacy of marijuana use, higher coherence of marijuana use, higher intentions of marijuana use, higher willingness of marijuana use, and higher willingness to pay for the tool compared to the sedentary behavior tool; the sedentary behavior tool will lead to higher intentions of sedentary behavior compared to the unhealthy eating discussion tool and marijuana use discussion tool; the unhealthy eating discussion tool and marijuana use discussion tool will not have message condition differences; there will be a significant association for the unhealthy eating discussion tool and marijuana use discussion tool with tool download, discussion behavior of marijuana use and unhealthy eating, and tool use compared to the sedentary behavior tool; and there will be a significant association for the sedentary behavior tool with discussion behavior of sedentary behavior compared to the unhealthy eating discussion tool and marijuana use discussion tool. For Aim 2, we tested hypotheses that the positive effects of the unhealthy eating discussion tool and marijuana use discussion tool relative to the sedentary behavior tool on perceived effectiveness, perceived interpretability, motivations to address the behavior, self-efficacy of unhealthy eating and marijuana use, coherence of unhealthy eating and marijuana use, intentions of unhealthy eating, marijuana use, and sedentary behavior, willingness of unhealthy eating and marijuana use, tool download, discussion behavior of unhealthy eating, marijuana use, and sedentary behavior, tool use, and willingness to pay for the tool will be greater for low authoritative parents than for high authoritative parents, greater for high authoritarian parents than for low authoritarian parents, and greater for high permissive parents than for low permissive parents.For the initial survey, participants first responded to measures of the child’s unhealthy eating and marijuana use, discussion of unhealthy eating and marijuana use in the past month, perceived risks, and worry. Participants were then randomly assigned to one of three tool conditions in which they received a communication about discussing marijuana use, discussing unhealthy eating, or sedentary behavior consequences. After viewing the tools, participants completed measures of perceived effectiveness, perceived interpretability, motivations to address the target behavior; as well as intentions, willingness, self-efficacy, and coherence for unhealthy eating and marijuana use. Since sedentary behavior is the control condition only a measure of intentions and discussion behavior was included. We included intentions, as this variable has been predictive of health-protective behaviors such as sedentary behavior. They then completed the dispositional measures of attachment and parenting styles, and demographic characteristics. At the end of the survey, participants had the option of downloading the tool they viewed in the study.One month later, participants were invited to complete the follow-up survey that included measures of past month discussion of unhealthy eating and marijuana use with child, use of the tool they received, willingness to pay for the tool they had received at the intial survey, self-efficacy, coherence, worry, intentions, and willingness. Following the survey completion, vertical air solutions participants read a brief explanation of the study and received links to websites of national health organizations with information about unhealthy eating and marijuana use.
They were also provided with the option to download all three of the tools and we were able to keep track of whether or not the participant downloaded any of the three tools. Participants received payment for their participation through MTurk . 4. Tools The tools were administered in the initial survey . It consisted of 3 conditions . As noted before, the sedentary behavior is the control condition. 4.1. Unhealthy Eating and Marijuana Use Discussion Tools For these conditions the stem begins with the following guidelines: “When given the opportunity and time, children are likely to talk to their parents about risky health behaviors such as eating unhealthy foods . It is important for parents to talk to their children about unhealthy eating habits starting at a young age and continuing through older adolescence. Below are some tips to help you have these conversations.” Then, the participants viewed a one-page information sheet that listed potential consequences of unhealthy eating , questions to consider about child and unhealthy eating , and script to use when starting a conversation with child about unhealthy eating . The script is the authoritative parenting-framed message adapted from the Study 2. 4.2. Sedentary Behavior Tool For this control condition, the stem begins with the following guidelines, “When given the opportunity and time, children are likely to look to their parents and adopt their risky health behaviors such as having a sedentary lifestyle. It is important to consider sedentary behavior regardless of your age. Below are some tips to help you be active.” Then, the participant viewed a one-page information sheet that listed potential consequences of sedentary behavior, questions to consider about sedentary behavior, and information about sedentary behavior. A script was not included in this condition. This is because the control condition was designed to avoid encouraging the parent to have a discussion with their child about sedentary behavior , and instead just focus on the behavior itself. 5. Measures The following measures from Study 1 were also be included in Study 3: demographic and personal characterisitcs, child’s unhealthy eating, child’s marijuana use, ECR-RS, PSDQ, self-efficacy, coherence, perceived risks, worry, intentions, willingness, and past discussion of unhealthy eating and marijuana use with child . Unless otherwise noted, the items were reverse-scored as needed and averaged to generate total scores. Additional measures in the initial survey and follow-up survey are as follows.This study provides new evidence regarding the efficacy of discussion tools in promoting parent discussions of unhealthy eating and marijuana use with their child. An important feature of the discussion tools of unhealthy eating and marijuana use is the utilization of the authoritative parenting-framed message within the context of the discussion tools . The effects of the tool conditions on perceived effectiveness, perceived interpretability, motivations to address the behavior, self-efficacy, coherence, intentions, willingness, tool download, discussion behavior, tool use, and willingness to pay for the tools were tested. Initially, the sedentary behavior condition demonstrated higher ratings for perceived effectiveness and motivations to address the behavior compared to the unhealthy eating and marijuana use conditions. There were not significant differences across the unhealthy eating and marijuana use conditions for perceived effectiveness, perceived interpretability, and motivations to address the behavior. This is important because the lack of differences in these two conditions suggests that any message effects are not due to differences in their perceived quality. Perceived interpretability was not significant. The sedentary behavior condition had higher ratings for intentions and willingness to discuss unhealthy eating compared to the unhealthy eating and marijuana use conditions. Consistent to hypotheses, intentions in discussing sedentary behavior was higher for the sedentary behavior condition compared to the unhealthy eating condition. Parents may have felt that sedentary behavior condition was also an important health-risk behavior to consider discussing with their children. Future studies should consider including a no-treatment control condition . This option could warrant for further interpretations on whether these newly developed discussion tools of unhealthy eating and marijuana are reliable in motivating parent discussion behavior of the behaviors by comparing with a no-tool condition. Parents were likely to pay around $1.18 for the tool, and consistent with hypotheses, willingness to pay for the tool was higher for the unhealthy eating condition than for the sedentary behavior condition, implying that parents were likely to pay to access the unhealthy eating discussion compared to the other two conditions. There was also a significant association between the unhealthy eating discussion tool and discussion behavior of unhealthy eating. These findings support the adaptation of the unhealthy eating discussion tool in promoting discussions of unhealthy eating with child. In contrast, the marijuana use discussion tool did not promote more discussion behavior of marijuana use relative to the sedentary behavior discussion tool. These findings suggest that the discussion tool was more effective in promoting discussions of unhealthy eating compared to marijuana use.