Associations between socioeconomic status, home food availability, parental role-modeling, and children’s fruit and vegetable consumption: a mediation analysis

Table 2 Descriptive characteristics of participants and variables

Characteristic/ variable	N (missing)	Mean ± SD or percentage	Minimum - Maximum
Age (years)	574 (0)	5.2 ± 1.03	2.92–6.67
Gender	574 (0)
Boy	316	55%
Girl	258	45%
Parental educational level^a
Low	166	29%
Middle	267	47%
High	140	24%
Total	573 (1)
Relative income^b
Low	146	28%
Middle	203	39%
High	176	33%
Total	525 (49)
Availability of FV^c,h	570 (4)	4 ± 0.6	2–5
Availability of SFD^d,h	565 (9)	2 ± 0.4	1–3
Parental role modeling of FV consumption (times per week)^e,i	570 (4)	9 ± 2.5	2–12
Parental role modeling of SFD consumption (times per week)^f,i	572 (2)	5 ± 1.8	3–14
Children’s FV consumption (times per week)^g,	574 (0)	21 ± 10.8	0–57

FV = fruits and vegetables, SFD = sugary food and drinks. ^a Categories of parental educational level; ‘low’ = comprehensive school, vocational school, secondary school, ‘middle’ = polytechnic school or bachelor’s degree, ‘high’ = master’s degree or licentiate/doctoral degree. ^b Cut-offs for relative income tertiles; less than EUR 1666.67 per person = ‘low’, EUR 1666.67 < > 1904.76 per person = ‘middle’, higher than EUR 1904.76 per person = ‘high’. ^c Availability of FV = average household availability of four FV items in FFQ. ^d Availability of SFD = average household availability of thirteen SFD items in FFQ. ^e Parental role-modeling of FV consumption = weekly frequency of parents eating FV in presence of child. ^f Parental role-modeling of SFD consumption = weekly frequency of parents eating SFD in presence of child. ^g FV consumption of children = weekly consumption frequency of four FV items in FFQ. ^h values from 1 to 5 were allocated to each food (1 = never, 5 = always). ⁱ values from 1 to 11 were allocated to each food (1 = not even once, 11 = more than once a day)

ISSN: 1471-2458