The Relationship between Social Support, Personal Distress, and Engagement in Feeeding

There is limited literature that explores how engagement impact parent-child relationships in feeding. Engagement is emotional sensitivity and also availability from different individuals that can show in different behaviors. This study examined primarily three of the following research hypotheses. First, there will be significant correlation between overall social support, and social support in the domain of parenting. Second, there will be significant correlation between engagement and overall social support. Lastly, there will be significant correlation between parent stress and overall social support. There were total of 58 parent and child pairs that participated in the study. There were three survey measures that were used to examine each variable, and engagement was coded with Noldus Observer XT software.  From the data analyses, it showed significant correlation between overall social support, and social support in the domain of parenting, as well as parent stress and overall social support. However, there was no significant correlation between overall social support and engagement. It is important to note that there were no correlations discovered in any of the variables along with engagement.  There may have been other variables that may have played active role in engagement (e.g. status in romantic relationship), but social support did not display any correlation with engagement. For the study’s limitation, there may have been self-reported biases in the survey measures, as well as adjustment time for both parent and the child in the lab setting.