De Decker Ellen, Hesketh Kylie, De Craemer Marieke, Hinkley Trina, De Bourdeaudhuij Ilse, Salmon Jo, Cardon Greet
Dept of Movement and Sport Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
J Phys Act Health. 2015 Sep;12(9):1272-9. doi: 10.1123/jpah.2014-0190. Epub 2014 Dec 19.
Television viewing is highly prevalent in preschoolers (3-5 years). Because of the adverse health outcomes related to this behavior, it is important to investigate associations and mediators of young children's television viewing time. This study investigated whether parental rules regarding television viewing time and parental concerns about screen viewing activities mediated the association between parents' and preschoolers' television viewing time.
Mediation analyses were performed with the product-of-coefficient test on data derived from the Australian HAPPY study (n = 947) and the Belgian sample of the ToyBox-study (n = 1527). Parents reported their own and their child's television viewing time, their rules regarding television viewing and concerns about their child's screen viewing activities.
Parents' television viewing time was directly associated with preschoolers' television viewing time and parental rule for television viewing time mediated this association in both samples (14.4% and 8.1% in the Australian and Belgian samples, respectively).
This study is unique in examining the mediating pathway of parental television viewing and a rule limiting TV viewing time and whether this is consistent in different samples. Due to the consistent importance, both parents' television viewing time and rules should be targeted in interventions to decrease preschoolers' television viewing time.
学龄前儿童（3至5岁）看电视的现象非常普遍。鉴于这种行为会带来不良健康后果，调查幼儿看电视时间的相关因素及中介因素很重要。本研究调查了父母关于看电视时间的规定以及父母对屏幕观看活动的担忧是否介导了父母与学龄前儿童看电视时间之间的关联。
采用系数乘积检验对来自澳大利亚HAPPY研究（n = 947）和ToyBox研究的比利时样本（n = 1527）的数据进行中介分析。父母报告了自己和孩子的看电视时间、他们关于看电视的规定以及对孩子屏幕观看活动的担忧。
父母的看电视时间与学龄前儿童的看电视时间直接相关，且父母关于看电视时间的规定在两个样本中均介导了这种关联（在澳大利亚和比利时样本中分别为14.4%和8.1%）。
本研究在考察父母看电视的中介途径以及限制看电视时间的规定方面具有独特性，并且探究了这在不同样本中是否一致。由于父母看电视时间和规定都持续具有重要性，在干预措施中应针对这两方面来减少学龄前儿童的看电视时间。
