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A mixed methods analysis of environmental and household chaos: considerations for early-childhood obesity research

BACKGROUND: Chaos has implications for child health that may extend to childhood obesity. Yet, results from studies describing associations between chaos and childhood obesity are mixed. New approaches to studying the environments of young children may help to clarify chaos-obesity relationships. ME...

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Autores principales: Krupsky, Kathryn L., Parrott, Andria, Andridge, Rebecca, Zvara, Bharathi J., Keim, Sarah A., Anderson, Sarah E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8520198/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34654393
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11936-w
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author Krupsky, Kathryn L.
Parrott, Andria
Andridge, Rebecca
Zvara, Bharathi J.
Keim, Sarah A.
Anderson, Sarah E.
author_facet Krupsky, Kathryn L.
Parrott, Andria
Andridge, Rebecca
Zvara, Bharathi J.
Keim, Sarah A.
Anderson, Sarah E.
author_sort Krupsky, Kathryn L.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Chaos has implications for child health that may extend to childhood obesity. Yet, results from studies describing associations between chaos and childhood obesity are mixed. New approaches to studying the environments of young children may help to clarify chaos-obesity relationships. METHODS: We conducted a concurrent mixed methods analysis of quantitative and qualitative data describing home and neighborhood chaos among a diverse cohort of 283 caregiver-toddlers dyads from Ohio. We examined the underlying structure of environmental and household chaos using exploratory factor analysis then sought to validate the structure using qualitative field notes. We generated total scores for factors of chaos and described their distributions overall and according to cohort characteristics. Additionally, we conducted a thematic content analysis of brief ethnographies to provide preliminary construct validity for our indicators of chaos. RESULTS: Dyads varied according to household composition, income, education, and race/ethnicity. We found evidence for a multi-factor structure for chaos, which included disorganization and neighborhood noise. Household disorganization scores ranged from 0 to 7.3 and were on average 2.1 (SD = 1.8). Neighborhood noise scores ranged from 0 to 4 and were on average 1.1 (SD = 1.1). Both disorganization and neighborhood noise were associated with indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage, such as lower educational attainment and household income. Qualitative data from households with high and low scores on the two identified factors were aligned in ways that were supportive of construct validity and further contextualized the social and material environments in which chaos occurred. CONCLUSIONS: Chaos represents a complex construct with implications spanning various disciplines, including childhood obesity research. Previous studies suggest challenges associated with measuring chaos may limit the conclusions that can be drawn about which aspect of chaos (if any) matter most of early childhood weight development. We advance the literature by demonstrating chaos may be comprised of conceptually distinct subdomains. Future childhood obesity prevention research may benefit from more contemporary measure of chaos, such as those relying on direct observations that account for a multifaceted underlying structure.
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spelling pubmed-85201982021-10-20 A mixed methods analysis of environmental and household chaos: considerations for early-childhood obesity research Krupsky, Kathryn L. Parrott, Andria Andridge, Rebecca Zvara, Bharathi J. Keim, Sarah A. Anderson, Sarah E. BMC Public Health Research BACKGROUND: Chaos has implications for child health that may extend to childhood obesity. Yet, results from studies describing associations between chaos and childhood obesity are mixed. New approaches to studying the environments of young children may help to clarify chaos-obesity relationships. METHODS: We conducted a concurrent mixed methods analysis of quantitative and qualitative data describing home and neighborhood chaos among a diverse cohort of 283 caregiver-toddlers dyads from Ohio. We examined the underlying structure of environmental and household chaos using exploratory factor analysis then sought to validate the structure using qualitative field notes. We generated total scores for factors of chaos and described their distributions overall and according to cohort characteristics. Additionally, we conducted a thematic content analysis of brief ethnographies to provide preliminary construct validity for our indicators of chaos. RESULTS: Dyads varied according to household composition, income, education, and race/ethnicity. We found evidence for a multi-factor structure for chaos, which included disorganization and neighborhood noise. Household disorganization scores ranged from 0 to 7.3 and were on average 2.1 (SD = 1.8). Neighborhood noise scores ranged from 0 to 4 and were on average 1.1 (SD = 1.1). Both disorganization and neighborhood noise were associated with indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage, such as lower educational attainment and household income. Qualitative data from households with high and low scores on the two identified factors were aligned in ways that were supportive of construct validity and further contextualized the social and material environments in which chaos occurred. CONCLUSIONS: Chaos represents a complex construct with implications spanning various disciplines, including childhood obesity research. Previous studies suggest challenges associated with measuring chaos may limit the conclusions that can be drawn about which aspect of chaos (if any) matter most of early childhood weight development. We advance the literature by demonstrating chaos may be comprised of conceptually distinct subdomains. Future childhood obesity prevention research may benefit from more contemporary measure of chaos, such as those relying on direct observations that account for a multifaceted underlying structure. BioMed Central 2021-10-16 /pmc/articles/PMC8520198/ /pubmed/34654393 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11936-w Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Krupsky, Kathryn L.
Parrott, Andria
Andridge, Rebecca
Zvara, Bharathi J.
Keim, Sarah A.
Anderson, Sarah E.
A mixed methods analysis of environmental and household chaos: considerations for early-childhood obesity research
title A mixed methods analysis of environmental and household chaos: considerations for early-childhood obesity research
title_full A mixed methods analysis of environmental and household chaos: considerations for early-childhood obesity research
title_fullStr A mixed methods analysis of environmental and household chaos: considerations for early-childhood obesity research
title_full_unstemmed A mixed methods analysis of environmental and household chaos: considerations for early-childhood obesity research
title_short A mixed methods analysis of environmental and household chaos: considerations for early-childhood obesity research
title_sort mixed methods analysis of environmental and household chaos: considerations for early-childhood obesity research
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8520198/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34654393
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11936-w
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