Can a Coding Tool Accurately Evaluate How Kids Respond to Marketing on Food Packaging?

Child-appealing marketing for unhealthy foods and beverages is a global public health concern, and marketing on product packaging is one of children's top sources of exposure to this type of marketing. However, there is currently no consistent method for evaluating the extent and power of child-appealing marketing on packaging, and therefore, the child-appealing packaging (CAP) coding tool was developed. This study aims to validate this novel tool by testing if the coding tool can accurately evaluate how kids respond to marketing on food packaging. The hypothesis for this study is that the CAP tool will be able to classify and rank marketing on product packaging similarly to how children and their parents rank the same food packages. In order to test this hypothesis, children and their parents will complete an activity where they classify breakfast cereals displaying different degrees of child-appealing marketing power as "child-appealing" or "non-child-appealing" and then rank them in order of their preference. Children and parents will also complete a focus group discussion to talk about why they classified and ranked the cereals the way that they did in the previous activity. Analyses will determine how well participants classifications and rankings agree with the CAP tool's classifications and rankings.