effect of a nutritional teaching booklet concerning breakfast on the knowledge of fourth grade girls: Tehran's sixth educational and teaching district

ABSTRACT

Nutrition as an important factor in health can be effective in educational success of students. Malnourished students have less concentration and attention. Lack of breakfast consumption for a long period has negative effect in behavior and health. The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of a nutritional teaching booklet about breakfast on the knowledge of fourth grade girls at Tehran's 6th educational and teaching district. This interventional study performed on 100 fourth grade girls from 10 schools in Tehran city, randomly divided into two groups; case who received booklet and control group. Subject At first a pretest of knowledge was done for all the students [case and control]. The case group was given the booklet to read by themselves. No teaching provided for the control group. A knowledge posttest was performed two weeks later. Two types of questionnaires [general and knowledge] were used to collect data. The following methods were used chi-square test for comparing case and control groups from the aspect of independent variables, pair t- test for comparing the knowledge scores between case and control groups and one-way ANOVA for assessment of independent variables effect on the mean difference of knowledge in samples. The mean score of knowledge in the case group against the control increased 2.22 [p < 0.001]. The one-way ANOVA method showed that none of the independent variables [family size, parents' career and educational level, dinner breakfast sleeping and waking up time, the person who prepares breakfast at home, breakfast consumption status in other members of family] had significant effect on the mean of the knowledge scores' difference. The results of this study showed the nutritional teaching booklet about breakfast caused an increase in the knowledge of this age group of girl students