Abstract

Parental involvement is considered an important element of school-based interventions concerning lifestyle change (e.g. physical activity and a healthy diet). This report is written for policy makers and intervention developers. The aim of the present report is in the first place to gain insight into the importance of parental involvement according to schools as well as according to literature that examined the effect of interventions including parental involvement. Secondly, the aim of this report is to provide insight into the effective elements of parental involvement. Therefore, we conducted a limited literature search in Scopus and a number of Dutch databases. Thirdly, this report lists Dutch interventions that include parental involvement based on the Interventiedatabase of Centrum Gezond Leven the Zoektool Gezonde school and the Erkenningsdocumenten. The results show that little is known on how schools perceive parental involvement, although we have indications that teachers feel that parents have a great responsibility when it comes to the lifestyle of their children. Furthermore, both reviews as well as original studies imply that school-based lifestyle interventions that include parental involvement are effective in improving lifestyle. Few studies examined whether interventions with parental involvement are more effective than identical interventions without parental involvement. As to effective elements of parental involvement, research indicates that addressing parents' knowledge, attitudes and raising skills (including communication and rule setting) are important content elements that influence children's behavior. How to bring these elements into practice is less clear. Implementation elements that could be derived from literature, include embedding interventions including parental involvement in existing school curriculum, the monitoring of barriers that occur before as well as during the implementation of an intervention and applying an interactive or personal way of informing parents. Regarding the inventory of existing interventions including parental involvement, we found that almost half of the school-based interventions concerning lifestyle included a parental component. In vocational education interventions mostly involved the support of parents, where in primary- and secondary education interventions mostly involved informing parents.