Motivating Texas Rio Grande Valley Parents to remove the TV from their 2nd grade child's bedroom via Motivational Enhancement Interviews

Background:

Television viewing is a sedentary behavior that is modifiable. Reducing media-related behaviors via school-based parent-focused interventions may hold promise for decreasing childhood obesity. The aim of this substudy of the Coordinated Approach To Child Health (CATCH): En Vivo was to evaluate a brief Motivational Enhancement Interview (MEI) program to encourage removal of the television from the child's bedroom.

Methods:

This quasi-experimental study targeted primarily Hispanic parents of 2nd graders (N= 240) recruited from schools in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Of the 181 who agreed to participate in this study, 120 were in the control group and 61 in the MEI group. Parents completed questionnaires about their child's media habits. Those in the intervention group received two telephone calls in either English or Spanish. Unconditional logistic regression analyses with the pre-test variable and intervention status as covariates were used to predict group membership.

Results:

At pre-test, 63.16% of 2nd graders had a television in their bedrooms. The CATCH: En Vivo – 2nd grade MEI intervention reduced that number to 41.03% (OR=0.25, 95%CI (0.08-0.82)). Both MEI calls were lasted under 15 minutes, as designed. Families were reached within 2.91calls (sd=1.90) for the initial MEI call and just slightly more tries for call 2 (͞x=3.26; sd=2.31).

Discussion:

Parents play a key role in younger children's TV viewing behavior. This first look at using MEI to target parents of children to modify TV behavior presents evidence on a promising strategy for modifying children's home media environment and warrants further investigation.