African American fathers’ social support and relationship quality with daughters’ physical activity beliefs and behaviors.

Abstract

Across childhood and adolescence, physical activity (PA) levels decline more frequently for African American (AA) females. Parents are important socializing agents of childhood PA motivation through supportive and encouraging behaviors. Littleinformation, however, exists on parental influence of AA girls, especially related to fathers' beliefs and behaviors. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between AA fathers' social support and daughter PA self-efficacy, enjoyment, and PA behavior. Eleven father-daughter dyads participated based on in-person and online recruiting. Daughters responded to survey items related to father-daughter relationship quality, paternal support for PA, PA enjoyment, self-efficacy, and weekly PA levels. Due to the small sample size, descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations were calculated between variables of parental influence and daughters' PA beliefs and behavior. Mean age was 43.8±4.6 and 11±0.8 years for fathers and daughters. Fathers' mean BMI was 30.8±4.8 kg/m2. Daughters' mean BMI-for-age percentile was 52.5±38.3 with almost half (46%) having healthy weight. Households were >80% dual parent, 73% included both biological parents, and 91% of fathers lived with daughters full-time. Mean paternal social support was 3.5 ± 0.5 out of 5, indicating moderate to high support. Mean fatherdaughter relationship quality was strong, 4.03± 0.6 out of 5. Daughters reported a mean of 7±3.9 hours/ week of total PA, mean PA enjoyment 4.5 ± 0.7 out of 5 and PA selfefficacy as 4.2 ± 0.6 out of 5, both indicating high levels. Most correlations among perceived paternal support and daughter psychosocial and PA outcomes were low to moderate: father-daughter relationship quality (r=.54), daughter total PA (r=.31), PA enjoyment (r=.39), and PA self-efficacy (r=.26). Father-daughter relationship quality was not correlated with any of the daughter PA outcomes. The findings of this study provide preliminary evidence of the relationship among AA paternal support and daughters' psychosocial and PA outcomes. The small sample size is a limitation and suggestions are provided for recruitment strategies with this population.