Correlates of irregular family meal patterns among children

The importance of family meals to the consumption of healthful food choices has been demonstrated and discussed in recent reviews. However, little information is available on barriers that interfere with regular family meal patterns during childhood. In a paper just published in the journal Food and Nutrition Research, we describe family meal patterns among 11-year-old children across Europe and identify correlates of irregular family breakfast and dinner consumption. We used data from 13,305 children from nine European countries who participated in the Pro Children Study in 2003.
The proportions of children who regularly ate family breakfast and dinner were 62% and 90%, respectively. Children who ate less vegetables were less likely to engage in family breakfasts as well as dinners, irregular family breakfasts was associated with more television viewing, and social differences in family breakfast consumption was observed.

Counselor competence for telephone Motivation Interviewing addressing lifestyle change

In a paper just published in the journal Evaluation and Program Planning we explored counselor competence in telephone Motivation Interviewing (MI) to change lifestyle behaviors in a primary care population with the
Motivational Interviewing Treatment Integrity (MITI) rating system. Counselor behavior was evaluated by trained raters. The MI fidelity was examined by comparing the MI fidelity scores direction, empathy, spirit, % open questions, % complex reflections, reflections-to-questions ratio, % MI-adherent responses with the matching beginner proficiency MITI threshold.
The inter-rater agreements for the MI fidelity summary scores were good (spirit, reflections-to-questions ratio), fair (empathy, % open questions, % MI-adherent responses) or poor (direction, % complex reflection). The MI fidelity scores for direction, empathy, spirit and the percentage of complex reflections exceeded the MITI threshold, but lower scores were found for the percentage of open questions, the reflections-to-questions ratio and the percentage of MI-adherent responses.
In conclusion, evidence that MI was implemented was revealed. However, the inter-rater agreements scores and some fidelity scores leave room for improvement ,indicating that raters and counselors may need more ongoing training and feedback to achieve and maintain adequate competence.