Publications by authors named "Mercedes Pratt"

The extant literature on picky eating focuses on children, leaving adults understudied. A sparse and mixed evidence base suggests relationships exist between picky eating and disordered eating in adults. The present study furthered this research by examining shared negative psychological correlates as moderators that may strengthen relationships between picky eating and disordered eating in undergraduate students.

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Functional Family Therapy (FFT) is generally recognized as an effective intervention for court-involved youth. Relatively few studies, however, have focused on the delivery of FFT among youth offenders, especially among older minority youth located at the "deep end" of the juvenile justice system. This research adds to this sparse literature by focusing on the voluntary uptake and continuation of FFT among such youth ( = 60) in Lucas County, Ohio.

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Background: Evidence suggests that schools play an important role in student health; however, little is known about variability in teachers' use of food-related classroom practices. In this study, we examined associations between teacher demographic and individual factors and their food-related practices and modeling in the classroom.

Methods: We had 239 teachers in the United States complete an online survey about their demographics (years of teaching experience, socioeconomic status of the school), personal health status, height and weight, and nutrition knowledge.

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Background: Infants who are admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) may experience significant symptom burden. Parents are often distressed by these symptoms, which can affect their long-term coping and distress. There is limited research examining nurse perceptions of infant well-being (symptoms, suffering, and quality of life [QOL]) and associations with nurse distress.

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To advance person-centered methods of operationalizing youths' social environment, we explored adolescents' definitions of "home neighborhood" by integrating narrative data with geographic information systems. We gathered data using semi-structured interviews and sketch maps with 55 adolescents aged 11-19 (78% African-American) in urban neighborhoods. We analyzed transcripts for themes through an iterative coding process and geocoded neighborhood sketches and activity locations using ArcGIS software.

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Recent neighborhood research emphasizes the importance of individuals' perceptions of their neighborhoods, as well as expands the definition of "neighborhood" to include the different contexts encountered during routine daily activities (Coulton et al., 2013; Kwan, 2012). The present study uses qualitative interviews, sketch mapping, and survey data to explore adolescents' experiences of different neighborhoods within their activity space.

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This study explored differences in mothers' and fathers' food parenting strategies, specifically coercive control, structure, and autonomy promotion, and whether parenting style and parental responsibility for food parenting related to the use of these strategies. Parents of children aged 2.5-7.

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Objective: This study examined the relationship between structure, autonomy promotion, and control feeding strategies and parent-reported child diet.

Participants: Participants (N = 497) were parents of children ages 2.5 to 7.

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