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The evaluation of a nutrition education programme on the nutrition knowledge of children aged six and seven years
Abstract
The purpose of this project was to test if learning took place through the implementation of a nutrition education programme, using specific developed nutrition education tools in pre-primary school children, aged six and seven years old, in the Vaal region.
A validated nutrition knowledge questionnaire was completed with the assistance of trained fieldworkers by all 88 purposively selected pre-school children in two randomly selected schools before and after the implementation of a NEP.
The intervention was a NEP using various tools, consisting of a food group puzzle, playing cards, board games and activity book.
Data were captured and analyzed for descriptive statistics on SPSS, version 15,0, and paired samples tests done to measure impact on knowledge.
The results indicated that the nutrition knowledge of the respondents was poor, but knowledge improved significantly on 67% of the variables tested (p≤0,05) after the NEP implementation. Food group knowledge improved from 13,4% before to 64,8% after the NEP. The functions of the various food groups had 60,2 (77,9%) correct answers after the NEP compared with 13,5 (27,4%) before.
Conclusions from and implications of the results are that a NEP could be successfully implemented to improve nutrition knowledge of pre-school children. However, further research is needed to test the effectiveness of each Nutrition Education Tool (NET) for impact on nutritional knowledge and dietary intake behaviour.
Key words: nutrition education, pre-school, nutrition knowledge
A validated nutrition knowledge questionnaire was completed with the assistance of trained fieldworkers by all 88 purposively selected pre-school children in two randomly selected schools before and after the implementation of a NEP.
The intervention was a NEP using various tools, consisting of a food group puzzle, playing cards, board games and activity book.
Data were captured and analyzed for descriptive statistics on SPSS, version 15,0, and paired samples tests done to measure impact on knowledge.
The results indicated that the nutrition knowledge of the respondents was poor, but knowledge improved significantly on 67% of the variables tested (p≤0,05) after the NEP implementation. Food group knowledge improved from 13,4% before to 64,8% after the NEP. The functions of the various food groups had 60,2 (77,9%) correct answers after the NEP compared with 13,5 (27,4%) before.
Conclusions from and implications of the results are that a NEP could be successfully implemented to improve nutrition knowledge of pre-school children. However, further research is needed to test the effectiveness of each Nutrition Education Tool (NET) for impact on nutritional knowledge and dietary intake behaviour.
Key words: nutrition education, pre-school, nutrition knowledge
