Peer influence on healthy eating and physical activity of preschoolers: A systematic review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background Approximately 12% of children under the age of five living in developed countries are overweight or obese. It is suggested that preschoolers begin to modify their health-related behaviours during the preschool years as they become exposed to new environments, such as childcare centres. Since children learn by observing and imitating the behaviours of those whom they perceive as similar to themselves, peers may play an important role in promoting healthy eating behaviours and physical activity in young children. This paper systematically reviews how peers influence preschoolers’ behaviours, and how future interventions can include children in the promotion of healthier eating and increase physical activity levels in childcare centres. Methods Six international databases were searched for quantitative, peer-reviewed, English or French primary studies reporting on the correlates, predictors or effectiveness of peers as role models for healthy eating and physical activity in preschoolers. Risk of bias was independently assessed by two evaluators using the Quality Assessment Tool for Quantitative Studies. Results Thirteen articles were included in this review: six measured physical activity, and seven assessed dietary intake. The quality score was rated as weak for nine of these articles, and as moderate for the remaining four. Four of the six physical activity studies reported that children were more physically active when one or more peers were present, compared to being alone, while large peer group size was negatively associated with physical activity in two cross-sectional studies. All nutrition intervention studies reported that children’s eating behaviors may be influenced by their peers’ food choices, preferences and modeling. Conclusions There is low evidence that peers may act as role models to children’s eating and physical activity behaviours, and that the influence of peers may be mediated by the number of peers, sex, age and the perceived status of the peers. Future interventions should target peers as agents for positive eating and physical activity behaviour changes in childcare centres. Key messages Peers could act as role models for promoting healthy eating and physical activity in preschoolers Higher quality experimental studies are needed to confirm these observations
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.018 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".