Short Communication
Children and parents’ cooking attitude and their relationship with cooking behavior: a cross-sectional survey of third–fourth-grade children and their parents
2018 Volume 26 Issue 4 Pages 363-371
Details
2018 Volume 26 Issue 4 Pages 363-371
Objective: To investigate the cooking attitude of children and parents, the relationship between parent-child cooking attitude, and their relationship with cooking behavior.
Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted using a self-reported questionnaire on 312 third–fourth-grade children and their parents at two elementary schools in Tokyo, Japan in June and July 2017. About cooking attitude (e.g., "I like cooking"), nine items were included in the questionnaires, and descriptive statistics were used for answer distribution. Scores for the nine items were compared between children and parents by using a Wilcoxon signed rank test. The correlation coefficient was calculated. Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to investigate associations between cooking attitudes and characteristics or cooking behaviors.
Results: Questionnaires were completed by 273 children (response: 87.5%) and 257 parents (response: 82.3%). Among the nine items, items with response distribution exceeding 50% to "strongly agree" were six for children and two for parents. The median of the total score (25th, 75th percentile value) was 31.0 (27.0, 33.0) for children and 27.0 (25.0, 30.0) for parents. Children's total score was significantly higher than parents (p < 0.001). The correlation coefficient between parents and children was rs = 0.14 (p = 0.047). Children and parents with high scores of cooking attitudes were more likely to cook food.
Conclusions: Cooking attitudes differed between parent-child, and the correlation coefficient was low. However, children and parents with positive cooking attitudes tend to cook food more frequently.
