The correlation of nutritional knowledge, attitude and practice with obesity and related metabolic diseases among school teachers / 中华临床营养杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To survey the nutritional status and nutritional knowledge,attitude and practice (KAP) of primary and middle school teachers in Shanghai,and to study the possible correlation of nutritional KAP with overweight/obesity and obesity-related complications.Method Using stratified cluster random sampling,a questionnaire survey was conducted among 544 hygiene teachers and 150 non-hygiene teachers selected from all primary and middle schools in all districts in Shanghai,investigating the nutritional status and nutritional KAP in this population.Results The prevalence of overweight/obesity and obesity-related complications were significantly lower in hygiene teachers than in non-hygiene teachers (19.81％ vs.38.15％,t =22.303,P=0.000; 18.6％ vs.26.39％,t =4.156,P=0.047).The attitude score was the highest among the 3 surveyed parts,significantly higher than the lowest,which was practice score (hygiece teachers91.76 ±13.66 vs.74.42±11.61,t=14.595,P=0.000; non-hygiene teachers85.67 ±18.77 vs.69.88 ±13.30,t =25.400,P =0.000).Hygiene teachers scored significantly higher than non-hygiene teachers in all the 3 parts of KAP (knowledge84.43 ± 11.98 vs.75.73 ± 16.82,t =5.822,P =0.000; attitude91.76 ± 13.66 vs.85.67±18.77,t =3.640,P=0.000; practice74.42 ±11.61 vs.69.88 ±13.30,t =4.030,P=0.000).There was no correlation between the teachers' body mass index and KAP scores,nor between obesityrelated complications and knowledge or attitude scores,while obesity-related complications was found correlated with practice score and KAP score (t =-0.146,P =0.005 ; t =-0.105,P =0.043).Conclusions The nutritional status of teachers in Shanghai primary and middle schools is associated with their nutritional KAP.There is a correlation between obesity-related complications and practice score.Hygiene teachers have better nutritional KAP compared with non-hygiene teachers.