Examining the Impact of a Nutrition Education Intervention Program on Middle School Students

The objective was to evaluate whether a middle school-based nutrition intervention program had any impact on the nutrition knowledge, attitudes, and healthful food choices of the students involved. After parental consent, fifty students’ ages 11-14 were randomly divided into either the intervention or control group. The experimental design included a pre and posttest that examined the comparison between the two groups over the two month intervention period. Over the 2 months, the participants of the intervention program received additional health education lessons twice a week whereas the control group received only the pre-and posttests and attended their regular science classes. Nutrition education sessions occurred twice a week for 60 minutes after school and were conducted by a certified science teacher. An analysis of covariant (ANCOVA) was conducted to compare the students’ posttest scores across groups (intervention vs. control group) on the particular dependent variables (nutrition knowledge, attitudes, and healthful food choices), using their pretest scores as the covariate. ANCOVA was significant for the intervention group in specific areas, with p = .018 for nutrition knowledge and p = .02 for nutrition attitudes. ANCOVA could not be conducted for healthful food choices due to the homogeneity-of-slopes assumption being violated. The program gave students an opportunity to examine their eating habits, make positive changes, and enhance their knowledge about healthy nutritional choices. Nutrition education programs in middle schools can be effective in promoting healthy life choices by children.