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Assessing the relationship between family mealtime communication and adolescent emotional well-being using the experience sampling method

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Journal of Adolescence
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While most prior research has focused on the frequency of family meals the issue of which elements of family mealtime are most salient for adolescents' well-being has remained overlooked. The current study used the experience sampling method, a unique form of time diary, and survey data drawn from the 500 Family Study (N = 237 adolescents with 8122 observations) to examine the association between family mealtime communication and teens' emotional well-being. Results showed that in approximately half of the time spent on family meals (3 h per week on average) adolescents reported talking to their parents. Hierarchical linear model analyses revealed that controlling for the quality of family relationships family mealtime communication was significantly associated with higher positive affect and engagement and with lower negative affect and stress. Findings suggest that family meals constitute an important site for communication between teens and parents that is beneficial to adolescents' emotional well-being.
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Assessing the relationship between family mealtime
communication and adolescent emotional well-being using
the experience sampling method
Shira Offer
*
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan 52900, Israel
Keywords:
Adolescent well-being
Family meals
Family mealtime communication
Multilevel models
abstract
While most prior research has focused on the frequency of family meals the issue of which
elements of family mealtime are most salient for adolescentswell-being has remained
overlooked. The current study used the experience sampling method, a unique form of
time diary, and survey data drawn from the 500 Family Study (N¼237 adolescents with
8122 observations) to examine the association between family mealtime communication
and teensemotional well-being. Results showed that in approximately half of the time
spent on family meals (3 h per week on average) adolescents reported talking to their
parents. Hierarchical linear model analyses revealed that controlling for the quality of
family relationships family mealtime communication was signicantly associated with
higher positive affect and engagement and with lower negative affect and stress. Findings
suggest that family meals constitute an important site for communication between teens
and parents that is benecial to adolescentsemotional well-being.
Ó2013 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier
Ltd. All rights reserved.
Family meals have been heralded in both scholarly research and the popular press as an important contributor to youth
development. Studies show that the frequency of family meals is positively associated with a myriad of health and well-being
outcomes. Adolescents who frequently eat meals with their family are healthier (Fulkerson, Kubik, Story, Lytle, & Arcan, 2009;
Hammons & Fiese, 2011), less likely to have eating disorders (Hammons & Fiese, 2011;Neumark-Sztainer, Eisenberg,
Fulkerson, Story, & Larson, 2008), engage in risky behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, or using drugs (Eisenberg,
Olson, Neumark-Sztainer, Story, & Bearinger, 2004;Franko, Thompson, Affenito, Barton, & Striegel-Moore, 2008;Fulkerson,
Story, et al., 2006;Musick & Meier, 2012;National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, CASA, 2010;Sen, 2010), and
have higher school achievement (CASA, 2010;Eisenberg et al., 2004).
Research further shows that family meals are benecial to adolescentspsychosocial adjustment. Using data from the
National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health) Musick and Meier (2012) reported that frequent family
dinners are related to a reduction in depressive symptoms. A similar pattern was observed among adolescents who partic-
ipated in the Eating Among Teens (EAT) Project (Eisenberg et al., 2004). The frequency of family meals was also found to be
related to higher social competence (Fulkerson, Story, et al., 2006) and lower perceived stress (Franko et al., 2008). This study
focuses on the association between family mealtime and teensemotional well-being.
The burgeoning literature on family meals has proposed several mechanisms by which family meals promote youth health
and well-being. Family meals, it is argued, constitute an important ritual and a major site for socialization (Fiese & Schwartz,
*Tel.: þ972 3 5318651; fax: þ972 3 7384037.
E-mail address: shira.offer@biu.ac.il.
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Journal of Adolescence
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jado
0140-1971/$ see front matter Ó2013 The Foundation for Professionals in Services for Adolescents. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2013.03.007
Journal of Adolescence 36 (2013) 577585
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2008;Fiese et al., 2002;Larson, Branscomb, & Wiley, 2006). Gathering at the table gives teens and their parents the op-
portunity to converse, express their feelings, and provide support to each other, which is important for reinforcing the social
bonds between them and building a sense of family togetherness (Fiese et al., 2002;Ochs & Shohet, 2006). Ochs and Shohet
(2006) further contended that family meals serve a moral function because they are pervaded by talk oriented toward
reinforcing what is right and wrong about both the family and outsiders(p. 42). Hence by eating meals together, parents can
convey key values to their children (Fiese, Foley, & Spagnola, 2006;Shaw, 2008). Family meals also facilitate parental
monitoring and supervision (Fiese et al., 2006;Neumark-Sztainer, Hannan, Story, Croll, & Perry, 2003;Ochs & Shohet, 2006;
Sen, 2010). Through conversations at the dinner table parents learn about their childrens daily activities and whereabouts.
According to ndings from the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse study nearly 80% of the parents inter-
viewed mentioned that family meals gave them the opportunity to learn more about what was going on in their teenslives
(CASA, 2010).
Overall, these studies suggest that one of the most important aspects of family mealsis communication between teens and
parents (Fiese et al., 2006;Fiese & Schwartz, 2008;Larson et al., 2006;Ochs & Shohet, 2006). Research shows that mealtime
communication is associated with lower emotional distress (Fiese et al., 2006) and a reduced risk of overweight among teens
(Jacobs & Fiese, 2007). Families, however, vary considerably in the extent to which they directly interact during mealtime
(Fiese & Schwartz, 2008). One major source of distraction during family meals is television, which is considered an important
inhibitor of social interactions (Feldman, Eisenberg, Neumark-Sztainer, & Story, 2007;Fiese & Schwartz, 2008;Jordan,
Hershey, McDivitt, & Heitzler, 2006).
In other words, it is not so much the family meal per se that is important for teenswell-being but what happens between
family members when they gather to share a meal. This important aspect of the family meal, however, has been relatively
overlooked in current research (Neumark-Sztainer, Larson, Fulkerson, Eisenberg, & Story, 2010). The major goal of the present
study is to ll in this gap in the literature by focusing on family mealtime communication. Musick and Meier (2012) noted that
future work needs to go further in assessing which elements of mealtime are most salient, looking beyond how often families
eat together.To respond to this call, this study examined the frequency of family mealtime communication and assessed its
relationship with adolescentsemotional well-being. Specically, it evaluated (1) what proportion of family mealtime is spent
on direct communication between adolescents and their parents, and (2) how adolescents feel when they communicate with
their parents during mealtime. On the basis of the literature suggesting that family meals constitute an important site for
familial social interactions, I hypothesized that family mealtime communication would be associated with increased
emotional well-being among teens.
Measuring family meals and family mealtime communication
Most of the research conducted on family mealtime has examined the number of days per week that children eat
with their family, with at least ve meals per week considered to be the optimal cut-off point for healthy outcomes
(CASA, 2010;Fiese & Schwartz, 2008). Studies, however, differ in the way they dene a family meal in terms of the
people present and whether it refers to a specic meal, typically dinner, or not. For example, in the Eating Among Teens
(EAT) project, respondents were asked about the number of times a week all, or most, of the family in their house ate a
meal together without specifying who was present (Neumark-Sztainer et al., 2010). Musick and Meiers(2012)study
used a more specic measure that asked whether respondents ate ve or more evening meals a week with at least one
of their parents. They found that 60% of the adolescents in their sample t this category. A similar number was reported
by Sen using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) who indicated that 57% of adolescent girls and nearly
64% of adolescent boys ate dinner with their family at least 5 days a week, without specifying who was present during
the meal.
Other studies are based on time diaries and calculate the number of minutes a day (or hours per week) adolescents eat
with their family. Using the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), Wight, Price, Bianchi, and Hunt (2009) calculated that a third
of the teens ate a meal with their family for at least 20 min a day between 4 pm and 9 pm. Crouter, Head, McHale, and Tucker
(2004) employed a more inclusive measure of family meal and found that teens spent almost 2 h a week eating meals with
both of their parents and siblings present.
Most of these studies focus on the frequency of family meals but they do not account for what teens and their parents
do besides eating when they share a meal. The current study uses a different methodology, the experience sampling
method (ESM), to estimate not only the frequency of family meals but also the extent of family mealtime communication.
The ESM is a form of time diary that collects information in situ about respondentsactivities, companionships, and
emotional states (Hektner, Schmidt, & Csikszentmihalyi, 2007). The ESM has several advantages. First, it makes it possible
to calculate accurate estimates of the overall amount of time adolescents spend eating meals with their parents under
different family constellations (i.e., with the mother only, with the father only, and with both parents present) and is not
limited to dinner time. As Musick and Meier (2012) pointed out, the benets of shared meals may not be restricted to the
evening meal.Second, because the ESM collected data on both primary and secondary activities it can be used to learn
about what other activities adolescents engage in besides consuming food when they eat meals together with their family.
The ESM thus allows estimating how much time adolescents spend communicating with their parents during family
mealtime.
S. Offer / Journal of Adolescence 36 (2013) 577585578
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Family meals, family mealtime communication, and the quality of family relationships
This study estimated the association between family mealtime communication and adolescentsemotional well-being
while controlling for the quality of family relationships. As pointed out in previous research, the frequency of family meals
may be confounded with other variables, most notably the quality of family relations. Studies have found that teens spent
more time (Crouter et al., 2004) and ate meals (CASA, 2010;Franko et al., 2008) more frequently with their family when
relations with their parents were warmer and more supportive, and when they reported a positive atmosphere during
mealtimes (Fulkerson, Neumark-Sztainer, & Story, 2006;Fulkerson, Story, et al., 2006), suggesting that the association be-
tween family meals and well-being may be the result of selection bias. The same concern arises with respect to family
mealtime communication. Family members may be more likely to communicate during meals when their relationships are
good (Jordan et al., 2006).
Research shows, however, that for many outcomes the association between family meals and adolescent well-being re-
mains signicant after adjusting for variables such as family connectedness (Eisenberg et al., 2004;Neumark-Sztainer et al.,
2003;Sen, 2010), cohesion and closeness (Franko et al., 2008;Musick & Meier, 2012), support (Fulkerson, Neumark-Sztainer,
et al., 2006;Fulkerson, Story, et al., 2006), and parental control (Musick & Meier, 2012). Additionally, longitudinal studies have
found that frequent family meals are correlated with lower rates of substance use (Eisenberg et al., 2004;Neumark-Sztainer
et al., 2008;Sen, 2010) and depressive symptoms (Musick & Meier, 2012) in subsequent years.
Altogether, these studies suggest that family meals are more than a mere proxy for some other family characteristics.
Although they do not make it possible to rule out the possibility that families with good (poor) quality relationships seek out
(avoid) eating meals together and communicating during family meals, they underscore the importance of controlling for the
quality of family relationships when estimating the association between family mealtime communication and adolescents
well-being. The present study includes three variables to control for the quality of family relationships: parental monitoring,
teen self-disclosure, and parental support.
Contextual and demographic controls
The present study also controlled for several contextual and demographic characteristics which have been shown to affect
teenslikelihood of spending time and eating meals with their family. Previous research indicates that adolescents spend
more time with their family over the weekend (Larson & Richards, 1998;Larson, Richards, Moneta, Holmbeck, & Duckett,
1996) and when they are at home (Larson & Richards, 1994). It has also been shown that adolescents eat meals with their
family less frequently as they grow older and that adolescent girls are less likely to have family meals than adolescent boys
(Fulkerson et al., 2009,Fulkerson, Neumark-Sztainer, et al., 2006;Fulkerson, Story, et al., 2006;Neumark-Sztainer et al., 2003;
Sen, 2010).
Method
Participants
The data are drawn from the 500 Family Study, a research project on the work, school, and home experiences of parents in
dual-earner families and their children. Participants were recruited in 1999 and 2000 through posts at local schools and
newspapers in eight urban and suburban communities across the United States. The study includes predominantly non-
Hispanic white families with highly educated parents whose average earnings were above the national average for mar-
ried parents in the United States. For more information about the study and the participantsdemographic characteristics, see
Hoogstra (2005).
Procedure
The 500 Family Study is a mixed-method study. Participants completed a survey and lled in the experience sampling
method (ESM). The ESM is a unique form of time diary that collects information about respondentsactivities, surroundings,
and emotional states as they occur in their natural setting over the course of a typical week (Csikszentmihalyi & Larson, 1987;
Hektner et al., 2007). In this study, participants carried alarm watches that were pre-programmed to randomly emit eight
signals during their waking hours for seven consecutive days. When signaled, participants were asked to indicate what they
were doing, where they were, who was with them, and how they were feeling in a self-report questionnaire. The ESM is
considered a highly valid and reliable instrument that provides accurate information about individualstime uses and sub-
jective experiences (Hektner et al., 2007). A major advantage of the ESM is that it provides detailed information about the
multiple activities respondents are engaged in simultaneously (Hektner et al., 2007;Schneider, 2006) and therefore makes it
possible to examine what activities respondents are engaged in besides consuming food when they eat with their family.
The analyses in the current study are based on data collected from the adolescents who lled in both the survey and the
ESM. Preliminary analyses showed that the excluded teens (i.e., teens who did not ll in the ESM) were more likely than those
included to be boys and report lower family support. The adolescents responded, on average, to 30 out of 56 signals and,
S. Offer / Journal of Adolescence 36 (2013) 577585 579
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consistent with previous research, those respondents who missed more than one fourth of the signals (n¼65) were excluded
from the sample (Schneider, 2006). The nal sample consisted of 237 respondents with 8122 signals.
Missing data in the four emotional outcomes and survey measures were imputed using a multiple imputation technique
with AMELIA II software (Honaker, King, & Blackwell, 2009). Seventy-four signals could not be imputed because the re-
spondents did not answer any of the emotional items prompted by these signals. This is not problematic, however, because in
multilevel modeling respondents can miss some signals, or items in a signal, and still be included in the model. Imputing
missing data did not yield signicantly different results.
Measures
Family meals
In the ESM respondents were asked to report the main activity they were engaged in when signaled. Responses to this
question were originally coded by trained coders into more than 400 activity codes (all items were double coded with
interrater reliabilities ranging from
k
¼0.790.95). One of these codes was eating a meal. Respondents were also asked to
indicate who they were with when signaled. I used these two questions to construct three dummy family meal measures:
meals with the mother only, meals with the father only, and meals with both parents. Due to low frequencies, I later collapsed
these three measures into one measure, referred to as family meals, which indicates whether respondents were having a meal
with either their mother only, fatheronly, or both parents when signaled (yes ¼1, no ¼0). This global measure of family meals
was used in all the multivariate analyses.
Family mealtime communication
A major advantage of the ESM is that it asked respondents to report not only on their primary activity but also on their
secondary activity, if they had any. I used answers to this question to identify signals in which respondents indicated that they
were directly interacting with their parents during mealtime. This dummy measure, referred to as family mealtime
communication, indicates whether respondents were talking to their parents while eating with them (yes ¼1, no ¼0).
Other family mealtime activities
Using responses to the second activity item, I identied two other categories of family mealtime activity. Family mealtime
leisure refers to activities such as watching television, reading, listening to music, and playing computer games during family
meals. Because the frequency of watching television during family meals in this sample was small (3 signals for meals with
the mother only, 8 signals for meals with the father only, and 8 signals for meals with both parents) I did not treat it as a
separate category. The measure other family mealtime activities refers to activities such as helping with the dishes, talking on
the phone, cooking, and playing with a pet. Finally, signals inwhich respondents did not report any additional activity besides
eating with their parents were coded as nothing else.
Emotional well-being
In the ESM respondents were asked to report how they were feeling when signaled. I used these items to construct four
composite measures of emotional well-being. These are the means of (a) positive affect dfeeling cheerful, happy, and good
about oneself when signaled (
a
¼0.69); (b) engagement denjoying the activity, nding it interesting, feeling involved in the
activity, and wishing to do something else (reverse coded) (
a
¼0.65); (c) negative affect dfeeling angry, irritated, and
frustrated (
a
¼0.90); and (d) stress dfeeling stressed and strained (
a
¼0.80). The response categories for all these items
ranged from 0 (not at all)to3(very much). As Table 1 shows, adolescents in this study reported, on average, relatively high
levels of positive affect and engagement and low levels of negative affect and stress.
Table 1
Descriptive statistics for well-being measures and controls (N¼237 adolescents with 8122 signals).
Mean SD Range
a
Well-being outcomes (ESM)
a
Positive affect 1.98 0.38 03 0.69
Engagement 1.62 0.32 03 0.65
Negative affect 0.48 0.35 03 0.90
Stress 0.51 0.38 03 0.80
Contextual controls (ESM)
a
Weekend 0.25 0.12 01
Home 0.45 0.14 01
Demographic controls (survey)
Adolescent boy 40.5
Age 15.38 1.60 1118
Quality of family relationships (survey)
Parental monitoring 1.77 0.64 03 0.66
Teen self-disclosure 1.71 0.60 04 0.80
Family support 2.24 0.46 03 0.87
a
Estimates were calculated at the aggregated person-level.
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Controls
I included two contextual controls drawn from the ESM. Weekend refers to whether the signal occurred during the weekend
and home to whether it occurred while the respondent was at home (yes ¼1, no ¼0). The demographic controls were drawn
from the survey. Gender was coded as a dummyvariable (boy ¼1, girl ¼0) and age was measured in years. As shown in Table 1,
the sample included fewer adolescent boys (40.5%) than adolescent girls. The average age was 15.4 (SD ¼1.6).
Using the survey data, the analyses also adjusted for the quality of family relationships. Parental monitoring was the mean of
ve items that asked respondents to indicate, on a scale ranging from 0 (never)to3(often), how often their parents check on
whether they have done their homework, limit the amount of time they spend watching TV or playing video or computer games,
limit the amount of time they go out with friends on school nights, call to check when they are out with friends, and ask them to
call home when they are out with friends (
a
¼0.66). Teen self-disclosure was the mean of 16 questions that asked respondents
how often they discuss issues with their parents, such as things they have studied in class, going to college, who theirfriends are,
drugs, and dating (
a
¼0.80). The response categories forall these itemsranged from0 (never)to4(23 times a week). These two
measures were adapted from the Sloan Study of Youth and Social Development (see Hoogstra, 2005). Family support, based on
Rathundes (1996) index, was the mean of 16 items that asked how often in the respondents family, for example, Ifeel
appreciated for who I am;I dothings I like to do without feeling embarrassed; and If I have a problem, I get special attention
and help(
a
¼0.87). The response categories ranged from 0 (never)to3(often). The adolescents in this study reported, on
average, relatively high levels of parental monitoring and family support and medium levels of self-disclosure (see Table 1).
Analysis strategy
I began by providing descriptive information about the frequency of family meals and family mealtime communication. In the
next stage, I used hierarchical linear modeling to examine the association between family mealtime communication and teens
emotional well-being. The major advantage of hierarchical linear modeling is that it accounts for the nonindependence of ob-
servations within individuals and can be used to estimate the signal-level (within-respondent level) and person-level (between-
respondent level) simultaneously (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002). First, the global measure of family meals was used asa predictor of
the four emotional well-being outcomes then the measure of family mealtime communication was used as a predictor. These
models can be expressed with two sets of equations. The rst is awithin-person (i.e. signal) levelequation that models emotional
well-being as a function of whether the respondent was eating a meal with his or her parents and level-1 controls:
Positive affectij ¼
b
0jþ
b
1jðfamily mealtime communicationÞij þ
b
2jðweekendÞij þ
b
3jðhomeÞij þ
3
ij (1)
The dependent variable is the score on emotional outcome (positive affect in this illustration) on signal ifor person j. In this
equation
b
0j
is the intercept,
b
1j
denotes the association between having a family mealtime communication signal and positive
affect,
b
2j
and
b
3j
respectively denote the association between having weekend and home signals and positive affect, and
3
ij
is
the within-person residual. In this equation the intercept is allowed to vary randomly across individuals. This variation is then
explained using the second equation, which estimates variation across respondents in
b
0j
as a function of covariates Z:
b
0j¼
g
00 þ
g
01Z1jþ
g
02Z2jþ.þ
g
0kZkj þ
n
0j(2)
In the person-level equation
g
00
is the average score on positive affect,
g
01
to
g
0k
are the regression coefcients of the
estimated effects of the covariates Z(i.e. age, gender, parental monitoring, teen self-disclosure, and parental support) on the
adjusted positive affect score, and
n
0j
is the person-level error term assumed to be normally distributed with mean zero and
unknown variance.
The hierarchical linear models also control for the aggregated person-mean levels of time spent on family meals in order to
differentiate between the within-person and between-person effects of family meals on well-being (Hoffman & Stawski,
2009). This control accounts for potential variation between respondents in the overall amount of time they spend eating
meals with their parents and consequently provides more accurate estimates of the association between family meals, family
mealtime communication, and well-being.
Results
The frequency of family meals and family mealtime communication
How much time do adolescents spend eating meals with their family and what proportion of that time is spent on direct
communication with parents? Table 2 presents the frequency distribution of family meals. The adolescents in this study spent
overall a small amount of their waking time eating meals with their parents. Only about 3% of the signals corresponded to
family meals with either the mother only, the father only, or both parents. ESM proportions can be multiplied by 112 (16
average waking hours per day 7 days a week) to derive a weekly estimate of the number of hours spent in family meals (see
Schneider, 2006). Hence this percentage corresponds to 3.36 h a week of family meals. Slightly more than one percent of the
signals were spent in family meals with both parents (1.2%) and with the mother only (1.1%), the equivalent of 1.34 and 1.23 h
a week, respectively. The adolescents ate less frequently with their father only (0.67 h a week).
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To estimate the proportion of family mealtime spent on direct communication with parents I categorized each family meal
measure by type of secondary activity. Table 3 shows the percentage of signals spent on direct communication, leisure, other
activities, and nothing else, out of all the signals corresponding to family meals for each family meal measure. The results
indicate that most family meal signals were spent in direct communication with parents (42.7%, 37.0%, and 54.7% for meals
with the mother only, the father only, and both parents, respectively). Overall, adolescents talked with their parents in almost
half of their shared meals (46.5%). Note that the highest percentage of family mealtime communication was found for meals
with both parents present. These teens were also less likely to engage in a leisure activity, such as watching television or
listening to music, during family meals when both of their parents were present. Teens engaged in a leisure activity when
both parents were present in only 13.7% of the family meal signals, compared to 22.5% when they ate meals with their mother
only and 34.8% when they ate meals with their father only. In 20% of all family meal signals teens reported doing nothing else
aside from eating when they shared a meal with both parents, compared to 14.6% and 17.4% when they ate meals with their
mother only and father only, respectively.
The association between family mealtime communication and adolescents emotional well-being
How do adolescents feel when they eat meals with their parents and, more specically, how do they feel when they
communicate with their parents during mealtime? Table 4 presents the results of a series of hierarchical linear analyses that
estimated the association between family meals and the four ESM well-being measures (Model 1) and between family
mealtime communication and these outcomes (Model 2), controlling for location and time of the week at level-1 and age,
gender, and the quality of family relations at level-2. Because the number of signals in each family meal measure was small, I
did not examine meals with the mother only, meals with the father only, and meals with both parents separately but rather
collapsed them into one global measure (i.e., family meals).
As Table 4 shows, respondents reported higher positive affect (b¼0.16, p<0.001) and engagement (b¼0.22, p<0.001)
and lower negative affect (b¼0.13, p<0.001) and stress (b¼0.09, p<0.001) when they ate meals with their parents
compared to when they did not. As hypothesized, family mealtime communication was particularly benecial to adolescents
emotional well-being. Family mealtime communication was associated with higher positive affect (b¼0.22, p<0.001) and
engagement (b¼0.33, p<0.001) and lower negative affect (b¼0.15, p<0.001) and stress (b¼0.15, p<0.001). Note that
the associations between each of these outcomes and family mealtime communication were stronger than their associations
with the global measure of family meals.
Discussion
The literature highlights the benecial effects of family meals for adolescentshealth and well-being. Yet the question of
what particular aspect of the family meal contributes to adolescentswell-being has not been systematically examined in
quantitative research (Fiese & Schwartz, 2008;Musick & Meier, 2012). This study built upon and extended previous research
on family mealtimes by specically focusing on family mealtime communication and its associations with adolescents
emotional well-being.
The rst research goal was to determine how often adolescents eat meals with their family and what proportion of that
shared time is spent on direct communication with parents. This study found thatoverall, teens spent slightly more than 3 h a
week eating meals with their parents, either with their mother only, father only, or both parents present. If, as Fiese and
Table 2
Frequency of family meals, by family constellation and overall (N¼237 adolescents with 8122 signals).
Mean
a
SD
a
Hours/week
Mother only 1.1 2.26 1.23
Father only 0.6 1.37 0.67
Both parents 1.2 2.29 1.34
All family meals 2.9 3.55 3.25
a
Means and standard deviations were calculated at the aggregated person-level out of the respondents total number of
signals.
Table 3
Family meals by type of secondary activity: percentages (N¼237 adolescents with 8122 signals).
Communication Leisure Other activities Nothing else Total
Mother only 42.7 22.5 20.2 14.6 100
Father only 37.0 34.8 10.9 17.4 100
Both parents 54.7 13.7 11.6 20.0 100
All family meals 46.5 21.3 14.7 17.4 100
Note: Estimates were calculated at the signal-level out of all family meal signals.
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Table 4
Hierarchical linear models results predicting adolescentsemotional well-being with family meals (Model 1) and family mealtime communication (Model 2), and controls (N¼237 respondents with 8122signals).
Positive affect Engagement Negative affect Stress
Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2
b(SE) b(SE) b(SE) b(SE) b(SE) b(SE) b(SE) b(SE)
Intercept 2.03*** (0.03) 2.03*** (0.03) 1.56*** (0.03) 1.56*** (0.03) 0.49*** (0.02) 0.49*** (0.02) 0.56*** (0.03) 0.56*** (0.03)
Signal-level
Family meals 0.16*** (0.04) 0.22*** (0.05) 0.13*** (0.03) 0.09** (0.03)
Family mealtime
communication
0.22*** (0.05) 0.33*** (0.07) 0.15*** (0.04) 0.15*** (0.04)
Weekend 0.08*** (0.02) 0.08*** (0.02) 0.17*** (0.02) 0.17*** (0.02) 0.05** (0.02) 0.05** (0.02) 0.10*** (0.02) 0.10*** (0.02)
Home 0.13* (0.02) 0.13* (0.02) 0.01 (0.02) 0.01 (0.02) 0.01 (0.02) 0.00 (0.02) 0.04** (0.02) 0.04** (0.02)
Person-level
Boy 0.03 (0.04) 0.03 (0.04) 0.01 (0.04) 0.01 (0.04) 0.00 (0.04) 0.00 (0.04) 0.01 (0.04) 0.01 (0.04)
Age 0.05** (0.01) 0.05** (0.01) 0.00 (0.01) 0.00 (0.01) 0.00 (0.01) 0.00 (0.01) 0.02 (0.01) 0.02 (0.01)
Parental monitoring 0.01 (0.04) 0.01 (0.04) 0.02 (0.04) 0.02 (0.04) 0.08* (0.04) 0.08* (0.04) 0.07 (0.05) 0.07 (0.04)
Teen self-disclosure 0.04 (0.05) 0.04 (0.05) 0.04 (0.04) 0.04 (0.04) 0.11* (0.05) 0.11* (0.05) 0.13** (0.05) 0.13** (0.05)
Family support 0.37*** (0.06) 0.37*** (0.06) 0.17** (0.05) 0.18*** (0.05) 0.24*** (0.07) 0.24*** (0.07) 0.11 (0.06) 0.11 (0.06)
Person mean
family meals
0.31 (0.55) 0.03 (0.06) 0.14 (0.59) 0.04 (0.05) 0.05 (0.61) 0.05 (0.47) 0.16 (0.61) 0.02 (0.06)
Within-person
variance
s
2
0.34 0.34 0.57 0.57 0.38 0.38 0.28 0.28
Between-person
variance
s
00
0.11 0.11 0.08 0.08 0.09 0.09 0.12 0.12
*p<.05. ** p<.01. *** p<.001.
S. Offer / Journal of Adolescence 36 (2013) 577585 583
Author's personal copy
Schwartz (2008) suggest, family meals typically last 20 min, this corresponds to almost 10 shared meals a week and implies
that teens and their parents eat not only dinners together but other meals as well. More importantly, the ndings indicate that
in nearly half of the time spent in family meals, adolescents reported talking to their parents. Family mealtime communi-
cation was especially high during family meals when both parents were present. These ndings corroborate previous research
and provide further evidence that shared meals give family members the opportunity to interact and communicate (Fiese
et al., 2006;Fiese & Schwartz, 2008;Larson et al., 2006;Ochs & Shohet, 2006).
The second research goal was aimed at testing how adolescents feel when they eat meals with their parents. As hy-
pothesized, results from the hierarchical linear model analyses revealed that family mealtime communication was benecial
to adolescentsemotional well-being. Family mealtime communication was found to be signicantly associated with higher
positive affect and engagement and lower negative affect and stress among these adolescents. Consistent with previous
research (CASA, 2010;Fiese et al., 2006;Fulkerson, Neumark-Sztainer, et al., 2006;Fulkerson, Story, et al., 2006), these
ndings suggest that family meals are an enjoyable activity for teens and constitute an important site for positive connections
and interactions between teens and parents, which contributes to adolescentswell-being.
Limitations, strengths, and directions for future research
This study has several limitations. First, because the sample consisted of dual-earner middle-class families it did not make
it possible to examine variations in family meals and family mealtime communication by socioeconomic status or parental
composition. Previous studies have shown that families of higher socioeconomic status eat meals together more frequently
(Fiese & Schwartz, 2008;Musick & Meier, 2012;Wight et al., 2009) and are less likely to watch television during shared meals
than families of lower status (Feldman et al., 2007). This important family routine may also be more difcult to maintain in
families headed by one parent compared to families headed by a couple because a single parent has no spouse or partner with
whom to share the work involved in preparing family meals (Tubbs, Roy, & Burton, 2005;Wight et al., 2009).
Second, the homogenous nature of the sample did not allow for testing differences by race and ethnicity. Previous research
has provided mixed results regarding the effect of race and ethnicity on family meal patterns. A recent study has shown that
minority teens in the United Kingdom are more likely than white teens to eat meals with their family (Maynard & Harding,
2010). Similar patterns have been observed among African American teenagers in the United States (Larson, Richards, Sims, &
Dworkin, 2001). By contrast, Wight et al. (2009) found that African American teens are less likely to eat meals with their
family than white teens. More research is needed to clarify the effects of race and ethnicity on the frequency and experience of
family meals.
Other limitations pertain to the cross-sectional and non-experimental design of the study, which is not suited for making
causal claims. This study cannot rule out the possibility that the benecial association between family meals, family mealtime
communication, and adolescentswell-being may be due to reverse causation; that is, that well-adjusted teens are more
willing to eat with their family and communicate with them during shared meals than their less well-adjusted counterparts.
Nor can the analyses account for the possibility that these associations are due to some unobserved characteristic of the
adolescent, parent, or both. Interestingly, Jordan et al. (2006) indicated that some of the parents in their study mentioned
watching television during family meals as a way to avoid conictual interactions with their children. Hence, although the
analyses controlled for the quality of family relationships, adolescents could have sought out or avoided communicating with
their parents during family meals as a function of some prior characteristic of the home environment. This is of particular
concern because respondents who did not ll in the ESM and were consequently excluded from the study were more likely
than those included to have reported lower family support. Therefore, adolescents in families with lower relational quality
may have been selected out, leading to inated estimates. Another potentially confounding factor that was not accounted for
in this study is parenting style. Following Berge, Wall, Neumark-Sztainer, Larson, and Story's (2010) nding that an author-
itative parenting style was associated with more frequent family meals, one can expect parenting style to also affect patterns
of family mealtime communication.
Despite these limitations, the current study makes an important contribution to the literature on family meals, and family
time more generally. The methodology it employed, the ESM, provided accurate measures of the overall amountof time teens
spent in family meals and made it possible to estimate how frequently they communicated during shared meals. The focus on
all family meals, rather than family dinners only, constitutes a major advantage of the present study.
Finally, by showing that the communication that goes on between teens and their parents during family meals was highly
benecial to adolescentswell-being, this study helped answer the important question of what is it about family meals that
explains better outcomes in youth(Neumark-Sztainer et al., 2010, p. 1119). Hence as an important routine and site for social
interactions between family members, family meals should be encouraged and facilitated. Nevertheless it should be
remembered that family meals are not the only arena for family communication (Kremer-Sadlik & Paugh, 2007;Musick &
Meier, 2012). Future research should also pay attention to other activities and routines that give families the opportunity
to communicate and build positive and enjoyable relationships.
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... In the family domain, protection can be explained by parental control and supervision, the quality of parent-child relationship, parenting style and communication (Balázs et al., 2017). Despite adolescents' striving for autonomy, joint activities with their parents, such as shared meals, cultural events or excursions can strengthen family cohesion and provide protection against youth substance use and help maintain their psychological health and wellbeing (Eisenberg et al., 2008;Gao & Potwarka, 2021;Harrison et al., 2015;Offer, 2013;Pavlova & Silbereisen, 2015). In addition, positive parenting may contribute to adolescents' higher levels of life satisfaction (Zhu & Shek, 2021). ...
... In addition, it stood out as the strongest significant predictor of life satisfaction among the leisure variables, independent of gender. Previous studies also reported on the protective role of the family against adolescent substance use, and that family cohesion can enhance the family members' psychological wellbeing (Eisenberg et al., 2008;Gao & Potwarka, 2021;Harrison et al., 2015;Offer, 2013;Pavlova & Silbereisen, 2015). In terms of sociodemographics, these activities tend to decline with growing age: younger children spend more time on family-based programmes, while older adolescents prefer peer-based ones. ...
... All in all, spending leisure time together with the family and attending cultural events may provide the most effective protection against adolescent substance use and negative psychological outcomes, and contribute to adolescent life satisfaction to the highest degree. These findings are in concordance with previous research (Eisenberg et al., 2008;Harrison et al., 2015;Offer, 2013;Pavlova & Silbereisen, 2015;Xie et al., 2020). ...
... Desde el inicio de la historia de la humanidad, las reuniones alrededor del fuego o de la mesa para compartir alimentos han sido un ritual central en la vida diaria de los individuos y una práctica familiar por excelencia (Beltrán & Cuadrado, 2014;Chang et al., 2020;Huergo, 2016;Moreno & Galiano, 2006). Comer en familia representa la forma más antigua de interacción familiar, un medio para fortalecer la cohesión, la identidad y los vínculos familiares (Beltrán & Cuadrado, 2014;Brown et al., 2016;Fiese et al., 2006;Franko et al., 2008;Fruh et al., 2011;Larson et al., 2006;Moreno & Galiano, 2006;Prior & Limbert, 2013) y una actividad fundamental para potenciar y facilitar las conexiones sociales, la comunicación humana y familiar (Beltrán & Cuadrado, 2014;De la Torre-Moral et al., 2021;Larson et al., 2006;Middleton et al., 2020;Offer, 2013;Prior & Limbert, 2013;Skeer & Ballard, 2013;Story & Neumark-Sztainer, 2005). ...
... Estos resultados muestran el estrecho vínculo existente entre comer en familia y comunicación familiar, confirmando que una de las funciones principales de comer en familia es facilitar la comunicación. Así lo corroboran también otros trabajos internacionales (Brown et al., 2016;Offer, 2013). En España, el informe para Family Watch de Beltrán y Cuadrado (2014) y el estudio de De la Torre-Moral et al. (2021) con adolescentes de 12 a 16 años, presentan asimismo a la comunicación como uno de los elementos principales ligados a las comidas en familia, ya que, según estos autores, esta rutina crea una clima de confianza y un ambiente distendido de comunicación, lo que facilita la detección de problemas o la interlocución de temas más complicados. ...
... Si bien es cierto que pueden existir muchas otras variables implicadas, que en este estudio no han sido controladas. En cualquier caso, varias investigaciones realizadas con adolescentes en diversas partes del mundo (China, EEUU, Nueva Zelanda) ponen de manifiesto que una reducción de afectos negativos -angustia, estrés, agotamiento, síntomas depresivos o dificultades emocionales- (Armstrong-Carter & Telzer, 2020;Fruh et al., 2011;Offer, 2013;Utter et al., 2017) y un aumento de afectos positivos, como la felicidad (Armstrong-Carter & Telzer, 2020;Chang et al., 2020;Lambert et al., 2014), la autoestima (Harrison et al., 2015) y una visión positiva del futuro (Fulkerson et al., 2006) están asociados a una mayor frecuencia de comidas en familia. Esto indirectamente podría ser la causa de la disminución de la agresividad del adolescente. ...
Article
La sociedad postmoderna ha transformado muchas conductas familiares, entre ellas, la comunicación familiar y el hábito de comer en familia, práctica que ha disminuido en España en las últimas décadas, al tiempo que han aumentado la agresividad y las conductas violentas en adolescentes. El objetivo principal de este trabajo fue determinar la relación de la frecuencia de comidas en familia con la comunicación familiar y con la agresividad en población adolescente. Participaron 1117 adolescentes (51.1% mujeres y 48.9% varones), entre 14 y 18 años (M = 16.20; DT = 1.31), procedentes de 23 centros educativos, 10 grados universitarios y 18 centros específicos de menores de Castilla y León (España). Se utilizó el Cuestionario de Agresividad de Buss y Perry (BPAQ) y la Escala de Comunicación Familiar (FCS). Los resultados muestran que la ausencia de comidas en familia está asociada con un descenso de la comunicación familiar y un aumento de la agresividad física, la ira y la hostilidad del adolescente. Si comer en familia va acompañado de comunicación familiar, una mayor frecuencia de comidas en familia se relaciona con una disminución de las tres dimensiones mencionadas de la agresividad. Sin embargo, si se deja al margen la influencia de la comunicación familiar, comer frecuentemente en familia se relaciona con una reducción de la agresividad (física, ira y hostilidad), pero comer siempre en familia está asociado con un nuevo incremento de la agresividad física y hostilidad. Los hallazgos revelan la importancia de potenciar las comidas en familia y la comunicación familiar.
... Family meals also provide time for families to discuss daily events (Hammons & Fiese, 2011;Skeer et al., 2018). Adolescents report spending nearly half of the mealtime talking to their parents (Offer, 2013). Conversations can address specific topics, such as problems youth experience, or be more subtle and promote communication and convey concern (Fiese et al., 2006). ...
... A sum was calculated across days, with 0 indicating that youth never had a family meal and 15 indicating that they had a family meal every day of the 2-week checklist protocol. We used this broad item because the structure and timing of family meals vary across different households (Berge et al., 2019;Larson et al., 2013) and past studies differ in whether they define a meal by the number of people present and the time of the meal (Offer, 2013). A prior study using this item found that adolescents report better emotional wellbeing and role fulfillment on days when they have a family meal, as well as reduced emotional reactivity to family conflict (Armstrong-Carter & Telzer, 2020). ...
Article
Adolescents, especially female youth, who have more family meals tend to be at lower risk for substance use. The present study tested whether family meals relate to substance use count and frequency during high school, whether associations differ by gender, and whether other family‐related variables explain these associations. A community sample of 316 adolescents ( M age = 16.40, SD = 0.74; 56.96% female; 41.77% Latine, 23.10% Asian American, 29.11% European American, 6.01% from other ethnic backgrounds including Middle Eastern and African American) reported the number of substances they have ever used and how often they used alcohol, marijuana, and cigarettes, and completed measures of parental support and family cohesion. Across 15 days, they reported whether they had a family meal, got along with parents, and spent leisure time with their family each day. Regression models tested associations between frequency of family meals and substance use, whether associations differed by gender, and whether associations were explained by other family‐related variables. Results indicated that more frequent family meals were associated with lower substance use count and less frequent alcohol, marijuana, and cigarette use among female adolescents but not male adolescents. Other daily family experiences were unrelated to substance use, and family meal frequency was independently related to lower substance use after accounting for parental support and family cohesion. Taken together, more frequent family meals in high school may reduce substance use risk for female adolescents, and interventions could consider promoting family meals in addition to other positive family values.
... Moreover, based on data like the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth in the U.S., studies have analyzed the correlation between the frequency of family meals among adolescents and smoking [24]. Similar findings have been observed in Israel and Scotland [25,26]. Studies conducted in Korea have also shown that the OR of smoking experience among groups of adolescents who do not have meals with their families is higher than those who have meals with their families, and research results indicated that a positive atmosphere during family meals reduces problematic behaviors in adolescents [27]. ...
... Finally, this study did not assess the quality of family meals. According to a previous study, even when families eat together, there can be significant differences in the proportion of mealtime spent in conversation depending on family members' participation [25]. ...
Article
Full-text available
Background Smoking is a major risk factor that significantly affects public health. Although the South Korean government spends significant money on smoking cessation services, the smoking rate remains stagnant. Families influence health-conscious decisions, and family meals can positively affect smoking suppression and health behaviors. Therefore, this study investigated whether family meals are correlated with adults’ smoking behaviors. Methods This study used data from the 2019–2021 Korean National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Having a meal together with family was defined as “yes” for those who have at least one meal with their family each day and “no” for those who do not. Current smoking status was classified as having smoked at least 5 packs of cigarettes (100 cigarettes) in one’s lifetime and having used either conventional cigarettes or e-cigarettes in the last 30 days. Multiple logistic regression analyses were used to examine the association between eating together, smoking, and weight application. Results When comparing the group that ate with their family compared to the group that did not, the odds ratio for current smoking status was 1.27 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.05–1.54) for male participants and 1.90 (95% CI: 1.33–2.71) for female participants. This showed a dose-dependent effect according to the frequency of family meals. Those who smoked conventional cigarettes had a strong association (men: OR 1.28, 95% CI 1.00–1.67; women: OR 2.22, 95% CI 1.42–3.46). However, those who only vaped e-cigarettes or used both conventional cigarettes and e-cigarettes had no statistically significant correlations. Conclusion This study provides evidence suggesting that eating meals as a family is related to smoking behavior and can positively affect smoking cessation intentions in adults. Consequently, a smoking cessation program can be developed that uses social support, such as encouraging family meals.
... family communication increases problematic internet use and online gaming behaviors. Existing literature also shows that family communication(KavehFarsani et al., 2020;Offer, 2013) and digital game addiction(Pappa et al., 2016;Van Rooij et al., 2017) are effective factors on adolescents' mental health and coping skills with psychosocial problems. Psychological resources such as family communication, motivations, and social skills are crucial in preventing addictions and protecting mental health(Gómez-Salgado et al., 2020). ...
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The presence of communication within the family can be considered as a protective factor in preventing the development of mental health problems in school by acting as a buffer against mental health problems in adolescents. Thus, this study, which was designed to reveal the potential mechanisms between family communication and bi-dimensional student mental health (psychological well-being/distress) in Turkish adolescents, examined the serial mediator role of digital game addiction and school belongingness. The study sample consists of a total of 397 volunteering Turkish adolescents, including 206 girls (51.9%) and 191 boys (48.1%). The participants' ages range from 14 to 17 (M = 14.63 years, SD = 0.60). In this study, a cross-sectional and explanatory design based on structural equation modeling was used. The main findings of the study are as follows: (1) digital game addiction mediated the relationship between family communication and psychological well-being/distress, (2) school belongingness mediated the relationship between family communication and psychological well-being/distress, and (3) the relationship between family communication and psychological well-being/distress was serially mediated by both digital game addiction and school belongingness.
... A high prevalence of negative affect (e.g., stress) has been reported in school (Moeller et al., 2020), while adolescents report feeling happier during leisure time (Bassi & Delle Fave, 2004;Mesurado & Richaud de Minzi, 2014), especially during structured activities, such as sports (Mazereel et al., 2021), versus passive activities ('doing nothing') (Delle Fave et al., 2011). Adolescents have also reported experiencing less negative affect when they are with friends and family compared to when they are alone (Henker et al., 2002;Offer, 2013;Schneiders et al., 2007;van Roekel et al., 2015). However, research has not identified how specific resources, such as those reported by Toyama and colleagues (2022), relate to the management of distress in daily life. ...
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Background: Reducing anxiety and depression of adolescents is a global health priority. Personal and social resources (e.g., hobbies, socializing) may reduce distress. Yet, there is insufficient understanding of how adolescents use such resources to reduce distress. Objective: To identify resources that reduced distress in the everyday lives of adolescents, and whether resource use differed according to symptoms of anxiety and depression. Methods: The experience sampling method was used, a longitudinal method requiring participants to report on context and mood at randomly selected moments across a week. 5558 reports were contributed by 151 adolescents, including 90 with symptoms of anxiety and/or depression. The study was conducted in the poorest neighbourhoods of Bogotá, Buenos Aires and Lima. Results: Multi-level modelling indicated that using resources was significantly associated with less nervousness and sadness. Adolescents with symptoms were less likely to use some resources (e.g., sport). Cross-level interactions showed the efficacy of resources differed according to severity of symptomatology. For adolescents with symptoms, some resources (e.g., peer support) improved mood, while others (e.g., music listening) did not. Discussion: Personal and social resources are important for reducing distress in the everyday life of adolescents, giving insight for potential interventions to help mitigate symptoms of anxiety and depression before escalation. Further research could assess the quality of experiences (e.g., appraisal) to deepen understanding of how engagement promotes resilience. Conclusions: Care must be taken when recommending resource use, since some forms (e.g., music listening) may be unhelpful to adolescents with symptoms of anxiety and depression.
... Mealtime serves as a means of bonding between family members and teenagers, and plays an important role in stress management. When children are threatened, they are more likely to seek security from their attachment person in order to reduce stress and negative affect (Kerns et al., 2015;Offer, 2013). Adolescents, who are characterized by transformation and exploration, may initiate a series of behavioral and cognitive changes. ...
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The mental well-being and dietary habits of adolescents have gained considerable attention over the past decades. The focus of most of the previous research has centered on the impact of specific food types and family meal frequency on mental health. However, the relationship between how often families eat together and other varied eating habits on the psychological well-being of young people remains under-researched. To address this, a survey was conducted among a large sample of students from Chinese elementary to high schools (N = 374,487). The study classified eating arrangement into three categories: only with family members, a combination of eating with family and other situations, and not eating with family at all. Findings indicate that regular meals with family correlate with a decrease in depressive symptoms and an increase in life satisfaction and positive mental health. This study also tested grade and gender differences. The highest grade range (10th -12th grade) showed the least impact on their mental health, which may be attributed to maturation and shifts in social relationships. The findings also suggest that the influence of eating arrangements on mental health was more pronounced among girls than boys, although this effect was relatively mild.
... Moreover, the beneficial effects of family meals have been explained for health issues such as weight problems, eating disorders, substance abuse, and more (Eisenberg et al., 2008;Valero Solis et al., 2019). A key component to explain this beneficial outcome has been the greater communication and interaction between family members as a consequence of eating dinners together more often (Offer, 2013). In Catalonia, the Public Health Agency (ASPCAT) has already started an early childhood health promotion campaign (Implica't) in which family meals are one of the recommendations provided, but it has not been evaluated. ...
... On the other hand, the relationship between food intake and psychological stress might depend on other factors such as the types of external or psychological stressors [55]. Finally, some other factors related to diet, such as diet variety [56] or differences in food grouping [17] used in each study, and social aspects, including the situation in which food is consumed (with family or friends or alone), could also be important [57]. ...
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Depression and anxiety are prevalent and disabling conditions among adolescents. The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between adherence to the Mediterranean diet (MD) and depressive, anxiety, and stress symptoms in adolescents. This cross-sectional study included a sample of 698 adolescent students from a region of Spain (mean age of 13.9 ± 1.5 years; 56.2% girls). Adherence to the MD was evaluated with the Mediterranean Diet Quality Index in children and adolescents (KIDMED). Mental health symptoms were measured with the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale (DASS-21). Logistic regression models were performed, including a wide range of potential confounders. Compared to individuals with low adherence to the MD, those with moderate and high adherence had lower odds of experiencing depressive symptoms (odds ratio [OR] = 0.40, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.24–0.65 and OR = 0.33, 95% CI 0.20–0.55, respectively), which were statistically significant even after adjustment. No significant associations were found regarding anxiety or stress symptoms. Therefore, according to our results, higher adherence to the MD is inversely related to having depressive symptoms among adolescents, regardless of socioeconomic, anthropometric, and lifestyle factors. Considering the deleterious effects of mental health problems in youths, further research on the role of nonpharmacological strategies for the prevention and treatment of depressive symptoms in adolescence is essential.
... ESM (Hektner et al. 2007; see Stone and Shiffman 1994 for a similar approach) were developed to investigate people's subjective experiences in situ, and the use of these methods is well established in research on physical and mental health, happiness, and emotional states (e.g., Brose et al. 2017;Cohn et al. 2011;Kimhy et al. 2006). In family research, ESM have been employed to study issues such as emotional transmission in families' daily lives (Larson and Almeida 1999), family communication and time use and their connection to adolescents' well-being (Offer 2013a(Offer , 2013b, and convergence of parents' and adolescents' emotional states (Larson and Richards 1994). But there are also ESM applications that have been used to study not just personal experiences, but social actions and processes (Zirkel et al. 2015, p. 7). ...
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This article is a qualitative review of 32 publications appearing since J. Bossard and E. Boll's (1950) seminal work on family rituals was conducted. Definitions are offered whereby a distinction is made between family routines as observable practices and family rituals as symbolic representations of collective events. The relative occurrence of family routines, as described in the literature, appears to follow a developmental course and is affected by the cultural environment. Family routines and rituals were found to be related to parenting competence, child adjustment, and marital satisfaction. The studies were limited by inconsistent methods of assessing family routines, reliance on samples of convenience, and a failure to distinguish between direct and indirect effects. Recommendations are made to better integrate theory with empirical efforts to demonstrate the importance of family routines and rituals in contemporary life.
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Divergent Realities: The Emotional Lives of Mothers, Fathers, and Adolescents. Reed Larson & Maryse H. Richards. New York: Basic Books. 1994. 256 pp. ISBN 0-465-01662-6. $26.00 cloth. Family researchers, and social scientists generally, are often frustrated by the limitations of the methods available to them. Questionnaires rely on people's notoriously unreliable memories. Laboratory studies always beg the question of how much they resemble real life. A fantasizing family researcher might ask, wouldn't it be nice to be there during family interactions, as they occur naturally, and ask people about their moods and perceptions of those interactions as they occur? Remarkably enough, this idea turns out to be more achievable than it might seem, and the results of its fruition have been presented in a new book on adolescents and their families by Reed Larson and Maryse Richards. The authors used a unique methodological approach known as the experience sampling method, or ESM, in which participants carried "beepers" around and were beeped at eight random times during the day between 7:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. for 7 days. When beeped, family members would report in a booklet what they were doing, thinking, and feeling just before the beep, on rating scales as well as in their own words. The study included 55 two-parent, middle-class families living in suburban Chicago, all with an adolescent in fifth through eighth grade. All members of a particular family were beeped at the same time, so that more than one perspective was obtained when they were beeped while together. The result is what authors call "an emotional photo album of their family life, a set of snapshots of what one young adolescent and her parents go through in an average week" (p. 9). These snapshots are fascinating and revealing. Most striking is the disparity in moods and perceptions that family members often experience when together, and how oblivious they can be to one another's emotional realities. For example: Mom is shopping for clothes at the mall with her adolescent daughter, and reports thoroughly enjoying herself and thinking that her daughter is, too; at the same time, the daughter reports being bored and thinking about a prospective boyfriend. Family members often do not even agree about whether they are together; the wife cooking dinner in the kitchen reports being with her husband, who is watching TV; he reports watching TV, alone. Husbands and wives disagreed one-third of the time about whether or not they were together; mothers and children disagreed one-half of the time about this. …
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Amelia II is a complete R package for multiple imputation of missing data. The package implements a new expectation-maximization with bootstrapping algorithm that works faster, with larger numbers of variables, and is far easier to use, than various Markov chain Monte Carlo approaches, but gives essentially the same answers. The program also improves imputation models by allowing researchers to put Bayesian priors on individual cell values, thereby including a great deal of potentially valuable and extensive information. It also includes features to accurately impute cross-sectional datasets, individual time series, or sets of time series for different cross-sections. A full set of graphical diagnostics are also available. The program is easy to use, and the simplicity of the algorithm makes it far more robust; both a simple command line and extensive graphical user interface are included.
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This study examined the implications of family time for firstborn and secondborn adolescent offspring, mothers, and fathers in 192 dual-earner families, defining family time as time shared by the foursome in activities across 7 days. Data were gathered in daily telephone interviews. For firstborns, higher levels of family time at Time 1 predicted less involvement in risky behavior 2 years later, controlling for Time 1 risky behavior. Longitudinal analyses predicting depressive symptoms revealed family time X parent education interactions for firstborns, fathers, and mothers, suggesting that the implications of family time depended on social class. The pattern of results suggests that family time is protective when chosen by family members but not when it represents a default use of time.
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This paper uses American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data to describe the time use of teenagers ages 15–17, with a focus on activities that may affect teenagers’ well-being such as sleep, eating, schoolwork, and selected leisure activities. We find that teenagers with an employed mother spend less time on homework and computers, are less likely to eat with parents, but spend more time in supervised activities. Teenagers with a single mother spend more time in paid work, are less likely to eat dinner with their parent, and spend more time in unsupervised activities, but they also get more sleep. Adolescents with more educated mothers spend more time studying and on the computer, less time watching television, and are more likely to eat dinner with parents. Family income correlates positively with teenagers’ paid work, homework, computer use, and the likelihood of eating with parents, but is negatively associated with sleep. Family size is positively related to time spent in caregiving activities, sleep, and eating with parents, but is associated with less computer use.