Parents’ awareness towards television food advertising that affect their children’s behavior and health / Dina Iffarina Rasidin and Nurul Syafiqah Aliah Suhaili

This research is about parental awareness towards television food advertisements which affect children’s behavior and their health condition. These days, children are certainly exposed to an abundant amount of food advertisements especially those promoting junk foods and foods that contain a high level of sugar, sodium, and calorie. This issue has become an alarming concern as the time spent by these children on television is undoubtedly increasing. Hence, they are more likely to watch more food ads. It is more worrying when the buying power is solely controlled by the children whenever they receive money from their parents. The purpose of this study has been designed to examine the parents’ awareness about unhealthy food advertising, family background, and purchasing power of children towards the behavior and health condition of the children. The respondents of this study are the staff in Universiti Teknologi Mara Cawangan Terengganu, Campus Dungun. To carry on with the investigations, the method that will be used is online questionnaires that will be given to 231 staff by using convenience sampling to collect the information from them. Then, there will be a descriptive analysis used to interpret the data such as mean, standard deviation, and frequency. The result of this study shows that majority of the respondents are parents with decent educational background and stable income. They are quite aware of the food advertisement shown on television. Therefore, this study offers some important insight to observe parents’ awareness of behavior and health condition of children towards food advertisement on television. In another way, the parents will become more aware whenever the children consume unhealthy food as their growth and health are agitated.