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Table 1 Parent perceptions of the PARENT trial

From: Parent engagement in co-design of clinical trials: the PARENT trial

Perception

Example quote

Positive or negative?

Parents perceive the PARENT trial positively, offering many potential benefits around addressing childhood overweight and obesity

“my overall thoughts about the, what I read about the Parent Trial and saw is that it’s an excellent study and it’s very interesting to see how you’re looking to collect data or how you’re collecting data and what you’re doing with that, but it looks like it’s a really, it should hopefully be a very effective study (anyway).”

Positive

“… so the things that I like about the study, obviously, are: the objectives for the study (around childhood obesity) but also being able to go through all of the questions – it really sparks ideas (for me personally) around what I should be doing as a first-time mom, so for example: there are a lot of questions in that questionnaire around screen time and so that obviously highlighted something that is related to childhood obesity for me.”

“When I read through the materials (and also watching this presentation) I thought it was really cool – I think it’s a really interesting way to, maybe, engage some parents that don’t know what they can do about childhood obesity other than eating healthy, and even when you say eating healthy I feel some parents (and even including myself), like “what does that really mean? What sort of food am I going to cook and feed my kids?” and then, of course, if you come from different backgrounds with diverse foods “how do I work that into my own culture?” I think having assistance and, maybe, someone keeping you accountable (too) is really interesting, so I don’t know if that’s the program running forward or if you’re just testing it out, but I think that’s, keeping people accountable is also really useful and good to do.”

“of course home visits, accountability, getting the extra support that you could get as a parent to improve your child’s health, all of that…”

“I just wanted to add that in terms of what they might see as benefits: things like the, just getting assistance (like for the home visits) – if they have questions that they want to ask – or like the group sessions just learning things that they might not otherwise know.”

Home visits are especially beneficial as they encourage accountability and offer assistance

“I just wanted to add that in terms of what they might see as benefits: things like the, just getting assistance (like for the home visits)…”

Negative

“I thought, first of all the home visits was a cool idea”

“Yeah, home visits really keep people accountable and I think giving them a person and a face to talk to or direct their questions to is really great because that engages them in their journey to being healthier or preventing obesity and what not.”

Alternative options may more appropriately assess outcomes related to overweight and obesity than BMI

“I feel like they’re quite appropriate, except for maybe the BMI because I feel like I’ve read a lot of criticism against that recently (maybe over the past year or 2) and I know it’s still the standard, but shouldn’t we be exploring different ways to measure outcomes?”

Positive

“I guess BMI also stuck out to me and I just kind of wonder if it’s, when you hear it’s problematic if it’s more for adults than it is for children ‘cause I think it has to do with muscle mass and maybe that’s not the same factor with children, but maybe a measure that could be used is body fat percentage rather than BMI – so, that’s just something that come to mind.”

“if we’re talking about obesity and then trying to prevent it from happening or controlling obesity, would physical activity, like hours of physical activity or decrease in screen time or something else that is more than just weight and fat? I only say that because I know, and I’m also not a medical professional so correct me if I’m wrong, but I also know a bunch of people who are bigger and are considered obese but they’re so healthy and they exercise a lot and they eat really, really healthy so I don’t know if there are genetic factors (or something else) that contribute to something and that we could take in to consideration – ‘cause I almost feel BMI is unfair for those people.”