Hughes and DuMont argued for the use of focus groups to unlock the cultural knowledge of communities and facilitate development of conceptual frameworks (Hughes and DuMont, 1993). They emphasised that to impose a conceptual framework on a community risks omission of constructs that are central to their experiences.

With this and the study findings in mind, we would advocate that the cultural context is made explicit in theoretical models of childhood obesity development. This would ensure that crucial information is not overlooked. There were several Selleck ABT-263 limitations in this study. Focus groups often had a small number of participants and many did not attend both sessions, which may have limited discussion. However, a variety of stakeholders were recruited so a broad range of views were accessed. www.selleckchem.com/products/PLX-4032.html Few men participated, so the views expressed are largely from a female perspective. It is possible that different themes would have emerged had there been more male participants.

This is a potential area for further exploration. This study explored South Asian community perceptions, and so we would not expect to generalise the findings to other communities. Nevertheless many emerging themes were similar to those found in other communities. Furthermore, the importance of the cultural context in the development of childhood obesity could be applied to any community. The problem with understanding the cultural context is that it may vary between neighbourhoods, religious groupings, or even families within the same community. Therefore, whilst some findings could be applied to all South Asians, some will only be relevant to specific groups. In conclusion, the use of focus groups to access information from a range of community stakeholders has enabled us to construct a complex picture of the contextual influences acting on children. We have highlighted the importance of understanding cultural contextual influences on the development of childhood

obesity, second and the dangers of inaccurate assumptions. We suggest that cultural influences need to be explicitly articulated in conceptual models of childhood obesity development, as this will guide researchers to seek to understand this aspect of context when developing childhood obesity interventions. The authors have no competing interests to declare. The Birmingham healthy Eating and Active lifestyle for CHildren Study (BEACHeS) is funded by the National Prevention Research Initiative (NPRI, http://www.npri.org.uk) and we are grateful to all the funding partners for their support: British Heart Foundation; Cancer Research UK; Department of Health; Diabetes UK; Economic and Social Research Council; Medical Research Council; Research and Development Office for the Northern Ireland Health and Social Services; Chief Scientist Office, Scottish Executive Health Department; Welsh Assembly Government and World Cancer Research Fund.