Knowledge and Attitude of Nigerian Undergraduates on Healthy Diet: Outcome of a Nutrition Education and Mobile Phone Communication Intervention
Abstract:
Undergraduates
may lower their risk of developing chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs)
such as; diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer which are consistently
among the top eight leading causes of death globally by improving their
nutrition knowledge and attitude towards nutrition. The study evaluated the
effect of nutrition education and mobile phone communication intervention on
undergraduates’ knowledge and attitude of a healthy diet in Oyo-state, Nigeria.
This
study employed a quasi-experimental research design among 100 undergraduate
students selected through a multistage sampling technique from four universities.
There were four groups: control, nutrition education alone, mobile phone
communication alone, and nutrition education and mobile phone communication
intervention. An 8-week follow-up was done after the study implementation. Data
were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics to test the effectiveness
of the interventions. All statistical tests were at 5% level of significance.
All
the respondents were single (100%). Mean age of respondents was 19.80 ± 2.22, knowledge
about healthy diet and attitude towards healthy diet among respondents in all
four groups at baseline was poor. A combination of the nutrition education and
mobile phone communication intervention exhibited significant increase in the
respondents’ knowledge of healthy diet by 19.93% from baseline (13.91 ± 3.48)
to endline (19.69 ± 2.73), with a big level of effect (ES = 0.602), this is the
highest effect size of all the groups. Mobile phone communication alone had the
highest increase in attitude mean score by 20.33%.
A
combination of educational program with reminder strategies improves knowledge
retention and attitude of respondents.
Keywords: Knowledge, Attitude, Healthy diet, Undergraduates, Intervention,
Nigeria.
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