Food neophobia in Lebanese children: scale validation and correlates.

OBJECTIVE: To validate the Food Neophobia Scale (FNS) and determine factors associated with the presence of food neophobia (FN) in a sample of Lebanese children. DESIGN: Cross-sectional study conducted between July and December 2019. SETTING: All Lebanese governorates. PARTICIPANTS: Parents of Lebanese children aged 2 to 10 years. RESULTS: Out of 850 questionnaires, 194 were excluded. The mean age of children was 5·34 ± 2·20 years (50·8 % females); 238 (36·4 %) had low neophobia scores (≤37), whereas 219 (33·5 %) and 197 (30·1 %) had, respectively, moderate (between 38 and 41) and severe neophobia scores (≥42). All items of the FNS were extracted except item 8 and yielded a two-factor solution with Eigenvalues > 1 (variance explained = 51·64 %; Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test = 0·746; Bartlett's sphericity test P < 0·001; αCronbach = 0·739). Children who refused initially to eat vegetables (ß = 5·51), fish (ß = 4·57), fruits (ß = 4·75) or eggs (ß = 2·99) and higher parents' instrumental feeding scores (ß = 0·3) were significantly associated with higher neophobia scores, whereas higher parents' encouragement scores (ß = -0·21) were significantly associated with lower neophobia scores in children. CONCLUSION: FN is common in children. Neophobic children tend to have lower variety in their diets. One of the ways to lower the levels of neophobia is the use of encouragement by the parents. In contrast, offering a reward to children for them to eat a certain food was associated with more signs of avoidance. More studies should be conducted to evaluate awareness levels concerning FN.

Parents' knowledge, attitude and practice towards children's vaccination in Lebanon: role of the parent-physician communication.

BACKGROUND: One of the most effective public health interventions in the world is immunization. However, some parents doubt its usefulness and safety. Many factors influence their decision to vaccinate, including their sociodemographic characteristics, their trust in the public health system, the parent-physician relationship, their level of knowledge and their attitudes towards vaccination. Our objective was to determine the factors, especially the parent-physician communication, associated with parental knowledge, attitudes and practices of their children's vaccination. METHODS: Three thousand five hundred parents (father, mother or both) of children aged between 1 month and 15 years were approached by a trained personnel who performed the data collection through personal interviews (February-April 2019). RESULTS: The response rate was 79.5%. The results of the multivariable analysis showed that a better patient-physician communication was significantly associated with higher knowledge, better attitude and practice. Better knowledge was significantly associated with better attitude, whereas better knowledge and attitude were significantly associated with better practice. CONCLUSION: Our study shows the importance of good physician-patient communication in improving knowledge, attitude and practice of parents towards their children's vaccination.