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Summary: Background: Family based treatment is an effective, multipronged approach to address obesity as it plagues families. Objective: To investigate the relationships among sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., education and income), body mass index (BMI) and race/ethnicity with readiness to change for parents enrolled in the Primary care pediatrics, Learning, Activity and Nutrition (PLAN) study. Methods: Multivariate linear regressions tested two hypotheses: (1) White parents will have higher levels of baseline readiness to change, when compared to Black parents; (2) parents with higher income and education will have higher levels of readiness to change at baseline. Results: A positive relationship exists between baseline parent BMI and readiness to change (Pearson correlation, 0.09, p < 0.05); statistically significant relationships exist between parent education level (−0.14, p < 0.05), income (0.04, p < 0.05) and readiness to change. Additionally, a statistically significant relationship exists, with both White (β, −0.10, p < 0.05), and Other, non‐Hispanic (−0.10, p < 0.05) parents exhibiting lower readiness to change than Black, non‐Hispanic parents. Child data did not indicate significant relationships between race/ethnicity and readiness to change. Conclusions: Results demonstrate that investigators should consider sociodemographic characteristic factors and different levels of readiness to change in participants enrolling in obesity interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By roughly 6 years of age, children acquire the stereotype that men are more competent than women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), potentially leading to greater trust in scientific information provided by men. This study tested whether 3- to 8-year-old children differentially endorsed conflicting information about science and toys presented by male and female informants depicted as a 'man' and 'woman' (Exp1) or 'scientists' (Exp2). Children were expected to endorse toy testimony from gender-matched informants; thus, the key question concerned endorsement of science testimony. In Exp1 (N = 149), boys and girls showed a same-gender informant preference for toy testimony; however, girls endorsed the male informant's testimony more for science than for toys - but only when tested by a male experimenter. In Exp2 (N = 264), boys and girls showed a same-gender preference, irrespective of content. Findings suggest that STEM-related gender stereotypes might lead girls to trust scientific information presented by men over women in certain contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]