Crystal Smit

Chapter 3 62 norms of friends. A possible explanation for the important role of parental norms in this study might be that, given the age of the participants, they were still living with their parents, resulting in daily exposure to the influence of their parents on their consumption behavior (Birch & Fisher, 1998; Patrick & Nicklas, 2005; Pearson et al., 2009). Findings from this study indicate several directions for future research. Given the result that intrinsicmotivation and parentswere important predictors of behavioral change, the question arises as to which role parents play in the development of intrinsic motivation among young adolescents. The self-determination theory highlights the crucial role of parenting, which can either facilitate or undermine young adolescents’ intrinsic motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Vansteenkiste et al., 2004). From this perspective parents’ daily behavior, which provides young adolescents with the opportunity to imitate the behavior, does provide not only information about the norms but also the chance to learn and develop the intrinsic motivation for the particular behavior (Matthies, Selge, & Klöckner, 2012). For example, one could expect that when young adolescents often see their parents drinking water, this would contribute to the development of their intrinsic motivation to drink water. It would be interesting for future research to examine the relation between parental social norms and the development of intrinsic motivation using longitudinal data. In addition, future research could also include a measure of the extent to which young adolescents engage in dietary intake because of pressure from their parents as the social component of the model (Birch et al., 2001). This study has a number of strengths, including a relatively large sample and the use of sophisticated longitudinal SEM analyses. However, some limitations need to be acknowledged. First, the assessments of adolescents’ fruit, vegetable, and water consumption were based on self-report. Although these measurements have usually been found reliable (Vereecken & Maes, 2003), one should keep in mind the potential overestimation of adolescents’ dietary intake (Collins, Watson, & Burrows, 2010; Lally, Bartle, & Wardle, 2011). Second, the measures of