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Parents’ perceptions of reasons for excess weight loss in obese children: a peer researcher approach

BACKGROUND: This study reports on the process of conducting participatory research by training peer researchers to conduct interviews and analyse data collected with parents of overweight children. The methodology was chosen as a means of (a) encouraging participation among a hard-to-engage group (i...

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Autores principales: Gillison, Fiona, Cooney, Geraldine, Woolhouse, Valerie, Davies, Angie, Dickens, Fiona, Marno, Penny
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664432/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29119009
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40900-017-0072-0
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author Gillison, Fiona
Cooney, Geraldine
Woolhouse, Valerie
Davies, Angie
Dickens, Fiona
Marno, Penny
author_facet Gillison, Fiona
Cooney, Geraldine
Woolhouse, Valerie
Davies, Angie
Dickens, Fiona
Marno, Penny
author_sort Gillison, Fiona
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: This study reports on the process of conducting participatory research by training peer researchers to conduct interviews and analyse data collected with parents of overweight children. The methodology was chosen as a means of (a) encouraging participation among a hard-to-engage group (i.e., parents of overweight children), and (b) generating novel insights and challenging academic/health professional assumptions through the involvement of parents in the interpretation of findings. METHODS: Four parents (all female) were recruited as peer researchers and trained in research processes, ethics, and interview skills over three half-day workshops. The intended interviewees were parents of children identified as obese through the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) at the start of primary school (age 4–5) but who had lost their excess weight by age 10–11; little is currently known about how this excess weight loss is achieved. Interviews were conducted by peer researchers, transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically by both peer- and university-based investigators. RESULTS: The peer researchers felt confident to conduct interviews after three training sessions. Recruitment of interviewees was challenging, resulting in only four volunteers (all mothers) over a 5-month period; thus peer researchers were only able to conduct one interview each. All interviews were considered good quality in comparison to those conducted by Masters-level research assistants. The process of co-analysis resulted in a change in emphasis from that initially generated by the university research team; the role of health professionals in weight management was de-emphasised, and the importance of ‘not singling out’ overweight children accentuated. Given the limited number of interviews, the results of the study are only provisional but resulted in three themes: Whole Family Action, Support (and lack of support), and Protecting Childhood. CONCLUSIONS: Training peer researchers to conduct and analyse interviews was feasible within a short period of training. Peer researchers found the experience interesting, informative and worthwhile. Two of the four volunteered to be involved in a related study 12 months later. The different perspective brought through co-analysis suggests that this approach to conducting participatory research may be a useful means of working with the public to generate new ideas to tackle intransigent issues. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s40900-017-0072-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-56644322017-11-08 Parents’ perceptions of reasons for excess weight loss in obese children: a peer researcher approach Gillison, Fiona Cooney, Geraldine Woolhouse, Valerie Davies, Angie Dickens, Fiona Marno, Penny Res Involv Engagem Research Article BACKGROUND: This study reports on the process of conducting participatory research by training peer researchers to conduct interviews and analyse data collected with parents of overweight children. The methodology was chosen as a means of (a) encouraging participation among a hard-to-engage group (i.e., parents of overweight children), and (b) generating novel insights and challenging academic/health professional assumptions through the involvement of parents in the interpretation of findings. METHODS: Four parents (all female) were recruited as peer researchers and trained in research processes, ethics, and interview skills over three half-day workshops. The intended interviewees were parents of children identified as obese through the National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) at the start of primary school (age 4–5) but who had lost their excess weight by age 10–11; little is currently known about how this excess weight loss is achieved. Interviews were conducted by peer researchers, transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically by both peer- and university-based investigators. RESULTS: The peer researchers felt confident to conduct interviews after three training sessions. Recruitment of interviewees was challenging, resulting in only four volunteers (all mothers) over a 5-month period; thus peer researchers were only able to conduct one interview each. All interviews were considered good quality in comparison to those conducted by Masters-level research assistants. The process of co-analysis resulted in a change in emphasis from that initially generated by the university research team; the role of health professionals in weight management was de-emphasised, and the importance of ‘not singling out’ overweight children accentuated. Given the limited number of interviews, the results of the study are only provisional but resulted in three themes: Whole Family Action, Support (and lack of support), and Protecting Childhood. CONCLUSIONS: Training peer researchers to conduct and analyse interviews was feasible within a short period of training. Peer researchers found the experience interesting, informative and worthwhile. Two of the four volunteered to be involved in a related study 12 months later. The different perspective brought through co-analysis suggests that this approach to conducting participatory research may be a useful means of working with the public to generate new ideas to tackle intransigent issues. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s40900-017-0072-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2017-11-01 /pmc/articles/PMC5664432/ /pubmed/29119009 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40900-017-0072-0 Text en © The Author(s). 2017 Open AccessThis 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.
spellingShingle Research Article
Gillison, Fiona
Cooney, Geraldine
Woolhouse, Valerie
Davies, Angie
Dickens, Fiona
Marno, Penny
Parents’ perceptions of reasons for excess weight loss in obese children: a peer researcher approach
title Parents’ perceptions of reasons for excess weight loss in obese children: a peer researcher approach
title_full Parents’ perceptions of reasons for excess weight loss in obese children: a peer researcher approach
title_fullStr Parents’ perceptions of reasons for excess weight loss in obese children: a peer researcher approach
title_full_unstemmed Parents’ perceptions of reasons for excess weight loss in obese children: a peer researcher approach
title_short Parents’ perceptions of reasons for excess weight loss in obese children: a peer researcher approach
title_sort parents’ perceptions of reasons for excess weight loss in obese children: a peer researcher approach
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664432/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29119009
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40900-017-0072-0
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