Parents are accurate reporters of their preschoolers’ fruit and vegetable consumption under limited conditions

OBJECTIVE: To assess the accuracy of parents as reporters of both their own and their 2- to 5-year-old children’s fruit and vegetable intake. DESIGN: Observational study with a 1-meal intake assessment by an independent observer, followed by a telephone survey to determine the previous day’s consumption using a 29-item fruit, juice, and vegetable food frequency questionnaire. SETTING: Two separate meal assessments in community-based settings. PARTICIPANTS: A convenience sample of 61 parent-child dyads from Eastern Missouri was recruited from a school health fair and the Parents as Teachers program. The mean age of the parents was 31.1 years, and 91% were female. The mean age for children was 39.0 months, and 60% were female. VARIABLES MEASURED: Parent and child fruit and vegetable intake. ANALYSIS: Interobserver agreement using a kappa statistic. RESULTS: Parents accurately reported their children’s intake on most fruits and vegetables (kappa=0.59-0.61). Parents were the least accurate in recalling the consumption of raisins from oatmeal cookies (kappa=0.05) and 100% juice (kappa=0.17). CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Parents can serve as accurate proxies to report fruit and vegetable consumption by their preschoolers on a food frequency questionnaire used to determine intake for the previous day. This can be a helpful evaluation method for research involving young children.