Development and validation of a social cognitive theory-based survey for elementary nutrition education program

International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity

Research

Elisha Hall¹  Weiwen Chai¹  Julie Albrecht¹  Wanda Koszewski² 

[1] Department of Nutrition and Health Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 110 Leverton Hall, 68583, Lincoln, NE, USA;Nutrition and Dietetics, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, USA;

关键词: Validation;    Social cognitive theory;    Behavior;    Self-efficacy;    Knowledge;    Healthy eating;    Elementary nutrition education;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12966-015-0206-4

 received in 2014-10-09, accepted in 2015-03-26,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) is a widely used model for developing elementary nutrition education programs; however, few instruments are available to assess the impact of such programs on the main constructs of the SCT. The purposes of this study were: 1) to develop and validate a SCT-based survey instrument that focuses on knowledge, behavior, and self-efficacy for fifth grade students; 2) to assess the relationships between knowledge, behavior, and self-efficacy; and 3) to assess knowledge, behavior, and self-efficacy for healthy eating among the fifth grade students.MethodsA 40-item instrument was developed and validated using content validity and tested among 98 fifth grade students for internal consistency reliability. Relationships between knowledge, behavior, and self-efficacy were assessed using Pearson Correlation Coefficients. Differences in behavior and knowledge scores between children with high and low self-efficacy were examined using t-test.ResultsCronbach’s alphas for self-efficacy (0.70) and behavior (0.71) subscales of the survey were acceptable, although lower for knowledge (0.56). Summary scores for self-efficacy and behaviors were positively correlated (r = 0.40, P = 0.0001); however, summary knowledge scores were not associated with self-efficacy (r = 0.02, P = 0.88) or behavior scores (r = 0.14, P = 0.23). Participants with high self-efficacy also had significantly higher scores on consuming fruits (P = 0.0009) and dairy products (P = 0.009), eating breakfast (P = 0.008), helping plan family meals (P = 0.0006) and total behaviors for healthy-eating (P = 0.001) compared to those with low self-efficacy. In addition, approximately two thirds of the fifth grade students reported that they did not eat any fruits or vegetables or ate them only once on a typical day.ConclusionsThe developed instrument is a reliable and useful tool to assess SCT-based elementary nutrition education programs, particularly for self-efficacy and behavior. Our results also indicated that strategic interventions are necessary to improve dietary behaviors regarding fruit and vegetable consumptions among elementary school students.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Hall et al.; licensee BioMed Central. 2015. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.