Examining the Effects of Nutrition Education on Children 9-12 Years!

Amanda Venuto!
Extension Scholar, Nutrition Education Intern!

Introduction!
The Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program, funded by the USDA, strives to
bring nutrition education to limited-resourced families. This particular study focused on the
responses of the youth, who were primarily between 9-12 years of age. These individuals
were exposed to EFNEP’s nutrition education by short-term classes which met either 4 or
5 times in one week. This year, the curriculum was titled, Up for the Challenge of Don’t
Bug Me! The classes were focused on food safety, but also included food demonstrations
and short lessons on MyPlate. The children were asked to take a pre-survey before any
information was taught, and a post-survey after the classes were finished. These surveys
were analyzed to determine the effectiveness of the program and curriculum, with the goal
of answering these questions:

1. Would children be more likely to have improved responses related to food safety
questions after being exposed to these classes?

2. Would children have improved responses to questions related to nutrition after being
exposed to these classes?

3. Which component had the biggest impact on the subjects (food demonstrations and
MyPlate lessons, physical activity, or lessons on food safety)?

It was determined that each category had questions with increased percentages; however,
diet quality questions showed the greatest change in the children’s behavior.

Methods!
Over the duration of 10 weeks, 4-5 one hour long classes were taught to children aged
primarily 9-12 years in all three counties in Delaware. These children were all registered
for Up to the Challenge! Program. Each participant took a pre-survey prior to being
introduced to the curriculum and a post-survey after all lessons were taught. These
surveys remained anonymous by using a cover sheet with a unique code for each child.
These surveys were entered into WebNEERS, a USDA data analysis program. The
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statistics were produced online from the WebNEERS website. The questions were
divided into three categories: food safety, diet quality, and physical activity.!
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Figure 1: The percentages of improved, unchanged, and worsened responses of subjects to questions in the pre-survey and post-survey.!

Results!
Discussion ! Conclusion !
Figure 1 shows the results of analyzing the surveys.!
Figures 2 and 3 show the pre- and post-surveys. Figure
The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of Up for the Challenge of Based on the results of this study, it has been shown that Up for the Challenge of Don’t Bug
4 shows a lesson being taught in class.!
Don’t Bug Me! curriculum. It was expected that subjects would have the most improvement Me! curriculum is effective, as children improved their responses to food safety questions,
when answering the food safety questions in the post-survey because a majority of the diet quality questions, and physical activity questions. The children seemed to value the
lessons were based on food safety. However, the diet quality questions actually showed the food demonstrations the most, which reflected the 31% increase in response to the healthy
most improvement. The greatest increase occurred in the question about eating healthy snacks question, and a 26% increase in response to the question asking parents to have
snacks (31%), which suggests that the food demonstrations had the greatest influence on vegetables within reach. !
changes in behavior. This is significant because it illustrates that many children are active
learners—they learned by making and by tasting.!
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There were several limitations with conduction of this study. !
•  One major limitation was the lack of food safety questions in the surveys. There were
only three questions related to food safety.!
•  The children were between the ages of 9-12. At this age, children are likely to not
consider the surveys seriously, which has been seen in quite a few of the surveys. ! Figure 4: Teaching a
•  Response bias, or a cognitive bias that could stray subjects away from recording a lesson on Temperature
truthful response, may have been present in this study. Subjects were asked how often Danger Zone to children
they eat fruits and vegetables, and how likely they would be to ask parents to buy their 9-12 Years. !
favorite fruits and vegetables. These responses improved, however, there is no way of
Figure 2: Pre-survey with cover page! Figure 3: Post-survey ! knowing if they answered questions truthfully, or if they answered questions in a certain
way because the instructors were nutrition educators.!
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