Associations between parental rules, style of communication and children’s screen time

Bjelland et al. BMC Public Health (2015) 15:1002 DOI 10.1186/s12889-015-2337-6 RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access Associations between parental rules, style of communication and children’s screen time Mona Bjelland1*, Bart Soenens2, Elling Bere3, Éva Kovács4,5, Nanna Lien1, Lea Maes6, Yannis Manios7, George Moschonis7 and Saskia J te Velde8 Abstract Background: Research suggests an inverse association between parental rules and screen time in pre-adolescents, and that parents’ style of communication with their children is related to the children’s time spent watching TV. The aims of this study were to examine associations of parental rules and parental style of communication with children’s screen time and perceived excessive screen time in five European countries. Methods: UP4FUN was a multi-centre, cluster randomised controlled trial with pre- and post-test measurements in each of five countries; Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hungary and Norway. Questionnaires were completed by the children at school and the parent questionnaire was brought home. Three structural equation models were tested based on measures of screen time and parental style of communication from the pre-test questionnaires. Discussion: Of the 152 schools invited, 62 (41 %) schools agreed to participate. In total 3325 children (average age 11.2 years and 51 % girls) and 3038 parents (81 % mothers) completed the pre-test questionnaire. The average TV/DVD times across the countries were between 1.5 and 1.8 h/day, while less time was used for computer/games console (0.9–1.4 h/day). The children’s perceived parental style of communication was quite consistent for TV/DVD and computer/games console. The presence of rules was significantly associated with less time watching TV/DVD and use of computer/games console time. Moreover, the use of an autonomy-supportive style was negatively related to both time watching TV/DVD and use of computer/games console time. The use of a controlling style was related positively to perceived excessive time used on TV/DVD and excessive time used on computer/games console. With a few exceptions, results were similar across the five countries. Conclusions: This study suggests that an autonomy-supportive style of communicating rules for TV/DVD or computer/ games console use is negatively related to children’s time watching TV/DVD and use of computer/ games console time. In contrast, a controlling style is associated with more screen time and with more perceived excessive screen time in particular. Longitudinal research is needed to further examine effects of parental style of communication on children’s screen time as well as possible reciprocal effects. Trial registration: International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial Number Register, registration number: ISRCTN34562078. Date applied29/07/2011, Date assigned11/10/2011. Keywords: Children, Parents, Sedentary, Television, Computer, Social control * Correspondence: 1 Department of Nutrition, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1046 Blindern, NO-0316 Oslo, Norway Full list of author information is available at the end of the article © 2015 Bjelland et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. Bjelland et al. BMC Public Health (2015) 15:1002 Background Sedentary behaviour is defined primarily as sitting behaviours such as TV viewing and computer use, representing a slight increase in expenditure above resting metabolic rate, but below the expenditure seen in lightintensity physical activity [1, 2]. Time spent sedentary, overall and in front of screens, is negatively associated with physical health [1]. Despite the unfavourable health outcomes derived from increased sedentary activity levels (5–10 h/day), many children engage in more than 2 h of screen-based behaviours per day [1–4]. In order to discourage time spent sedentary, more knowledge is needed about factors which determine or are related to these sedentary behaviours and overall sedentary time. Previous research has shown that individual factors (gender and age), demographic factors (socio-economic status) and family environmental factors such as availability of TVs, parental modelling and parental rules, are related to overall sedentary time and/or screen time [1, 2, 5, 6]. Age is also an important factor in a prevention perspective. The age of 10–11 years is called a “key transition age” [7] because adolescents are establishing behavioural patterns that may continue into adulthood and have implications for long term health. Yet behaviours are more easily changed or prevented when they are still being developed or recently established than when part of a lifestyle [8]. In particular, presence of parental rules and style of communication are two important family environmental factors. Several studies have found an inverse association between parental rules and screen time in preadolescents, reported either by children or their parents [9–14]. Further research exploring rules related to regulation of TV/DVD and computer/game console activities is warranted, as well as studies investigating barriers and facilitators to reduce screen time within the family home environment – from both the child and parent perspective [15]. Furthermore, research suggests that parents’ style of communication with their children is related to the children’s time spent watching TV [16, 17]. Jago et al. [16] explored to what extent parenting styles and practices are associated with children’s TV viewing, but emphasize that they did not examine the relative efficacy of different approaches of communicating restriction messages. The authors conclude “Therefore, future work needs to focus on how best to deliver restriction messages….” (p. 576). In this study, parents’ style of communicating rules was conceptualized on the basis of several theories on parental socialization, in particular Hoffman’s theory of moral development [18] and Self-Determination Theory (SDT) [19]. Hoffman [18] distinguished between several styles of introducing parental rules, the most important ones of which are inductive discipline (i.e., pointing out Page 2 of 13 the consequences of the child’s behaviour) and power assertion (i.e., forceful control of the child’s behaviour through harsh behaviours such as physical punishment or the threat of punishment). Research has shown that inductive discipline is more effective in fostering children’s internalization of rules a (...truncated)