Abstract
Preschool physical activity (PA) has been related to the influences that parents provide (Loprinzi & Trost, 2010). One influence that has received little attention is parental social control. Social control is a regulatory influence that parents use to prompt or persuade their child to perform PA (Wilson & Spink, 2011). Given that parents’ efficacy has been associated with their child’s behavior (Smith et al. 2010; Wilson & Spink, 2012), it may be expected that parent’s regulatory efficacy to manage their child’s PA would be associated with the influences such as social control that they provide. This study explored whether parent self-efficacy was associated with the use of social control in preschool age children. Parents of children (N=23) age 2-6 years old completed a questionnaire assessing their self-efficacy for scheduling their child’s PA and overcoming barriers to their child’s PA. Parents also reported the amount of social control they used over the past week with 9 items assessing collaborative, positive and negative social control. A separate regression analysis was performed for each type of SC with both barriers and scheduling self-efficacy included as predictors. For collaborative social control, parents who were more confident in overcoming barriers reported using more collaborative social control (b=.058, p=.001; R2=.44). For positive SC, barriers self-efficacy was also related to its use (b=.046, p=.043; R2=.21). Parent self-efficacy was not related to use of negative social control (p=.33; R2 =.11). These findings suggest that parents’ confidence may be associated with how they interact with their child about PA.
