Center for Families

Leslie Cradler is an undergraduate in the didactic program for Dietetics in the Department of Foods and Nutrition within the College of Consumer and Family Sciences. She recently transferred from a small liberal arts college to pursue an interest in nutrition. She is working with her advisor, Dr. Carol Boushey, on her honors project. She plans to graduate in spring 2009 and is currently looking at possible graduate schools or internships after her studies are complete at Purdue.

Cradler was awarded a research enhancement award for her project, “Are adolescent attitudes toward calcium rich foods and intake of dietary calcium related to the presence of grandparent(s) living in the household?”

With the help of Dr. Boushey, Cradler is looking at several sociological factors which may influence calcium intake in adolescents. The specific aim of this study is to examine the composition of the household as it relates to the attitudes adolescents hold towards the consumption of calcium-rich foods and the actual consumption of calcium-rich foods. Foremost, Cradler is looking to see if a grandparent's presence in the household will affect the nutrient intake of the children of that household. She hypothesizes that early adolescents from households with a grandparent(s) will have a more positive attitude toward calcium-rich foods and a higher consumption of total calcium than their counterparts in households without a grandparent(s).

Information has been gathered using parent-child questionnaires. Approximately 800 parent-child questionnaires have been collected with an emphasis on the Hispanic, Asian, and Non-Hispanic Caucasian ethnicities.  These questionnaires deal with food frequency and are specifically tailored to look at calcium intake. The questionnaires also assess the composition of the child’s family and the possible influence that family may have had on the child’s eating habits. Psychological factors that can be assessed using these questionnaires include a child’s attitude towards the taste of calcium rich and whether the child perceives calcium rich foods as healthy. Cradler will be relating the primary exposure of having the grandparent in the household to the attitudes of the child towards calcium rich foods and then separately relating the attitudes towards the overall nutrient intake.

Cradler thinks that this study should help better understand the effect of multiple generations on childhood eating habits. Many studies when looking at family composition only look at the parents’ influence on their child’s eating habits. By better understanding the entire family’s role in shaping a child’s eating habits we can better understand and educate children in regards to nutrition.

Findings thus far:

Several of the study’s initial questionnaires failed to scan, so they had to be individually refilled out twice. They were filled out twice so the two replacement questionnaires could be compared against each other to ensure accuracy. The scans from both sets of replacement questionnaires have been returned, and Cradler is currently checking them for accuracy before she can merge them with the questionnaires that have already been scanned. After all the data is ensured accurate and then merged with the initial data collected, she will begin to look at the psychosocial factors using univariate analysis with ANOVA and multivariate analysis with linear regression