Table 1 Sections from the 41-item Family Survey Questionnaire

1) Child’s eating and drinking habits

Questions about fruit, vegetable, dairy, soda, snack-food consumption and family meals; parents reported the number of servings of fruits and vegetables eaten by their children in a typical day (0 to 5 or more).

Questions on the number of 12-ounce servings of sweetened soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages (i.e., Kool-aid, sport drinks) their child drank per day or per week.

Beverage questions were adapted from the Harvard Service Food Frequency Questionnaire [17]

2) Child’s non-active time habits

Questions on sleep, screen-time (i.e., television, video, computer, and video game) exposure, reported as total hours and/or minutes per week), number of televisions in the household and eating in front of the TV during meals using questions in a standard, validated format[18]

3) Child’s physical activity habits and parental support questions

Reporting of organized sports and physical activity. Does your child participate in organized sports (Yes/No). What sports reported by season.

How often do you encourage your child to be physically active (a lot/sometimes/rarely/never)

How often do you and your child do something active together (a lot/sometimes/rarely/never)

How often do you and your child talk about fruits and vegetables (a lot/sometimes/rarely/never)

4) Child’s medical information

“Has your child’s doctor ever told you that your child is overweight or obese?”

5) Household information

Parental education (i.e., less than high school, high school, some college, or college/graduate school) for parents, parental marital status, number of children in household, parental place of birth, and whether the family received government assistance.

Parental education and government assistance were used as proxy measures for socio-economic status given that collecting verifiable information about household income was not feasible in this rural sample.