Measuring the Impact of Advertisement on Children Diet Choice in the Pediatric Population

Background: The aim of this study was to evaluate the test–retest reliability of the paired selection method for measuring the impact of food advertising on the consumption preferences of children. Methods: In this study, 52 children aged 4 to 6 years participated in watching an advertisement style video showing four foodstuffs with low nutritional value. Two pollsters were introduced at two instances showing pairs of pictures of the advertised foodstuffs right next to similar products, so that children could express their preferences. The test–retest reliability was measured through the concordance and interclass co-relation between both answers. Results: Kappa concordance indices of 0.71 (0.46–0.97), 0.88 (0.62–1.15), and 0.90 (0.64–1.16) were obtained for the three foodstuff pairs. The interclass correlation coefficient for the sum of manifested preferred scores was 0.72 (p = 0.0000). Conclusions: The paired selection method has been demonstrated to be efficient with good or very good reliability, making it useful for measuring the impact of food advertising on this age group. Keywords: food advertising; food habits; childhood obesity; television advertising; assessment.