The Effect of the Health Promotion Program of Thin Pre-School Children on Nutritional Care Behavior among Caregivers

Abstract

This study was a quasi-experimental research using a two-group, pretest-posttest design. The purpose of this research aimed to study the effect of the health promotion program of thin pre-school children on nutritional care behavior among caregivers. The subjects of this study were 76 caregivers, aged 20-59 years have roles and duties to take care of food providing for pre-school children. The subjects were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups, with 38 patients in each group. The experimental group participated in the health promotion program that applied health belief model based on Becker, s health belief model, for 7 sessions, each session took 120 minutes, the control group received routine care. The research instruments consisted of the health promotion program and nutritional care behaviors questionnaire in which the Cronbach, s alpha coefficient was .82. Descriptive statistics and t-test were used to analyze the data. The results of the study were follows.
1) The mean scores for the nutritional care behaviors of the experimental groups after participating
(x̅ = 90.71, SD. = 8.29) in the health promotion program was statistically significantly higher of the mean scores
than before participating (x̅ = 66.24, SD. = 5.814) in the program (t = 15.50, p < .05)
2) The mean scores for the nutritional care behaviors of the experimental groups (x̅ = 90.71, SD. = 8.29) and the control groups (x̅ = 79.42, SD. = 6.62) after participating in the health promotion program was statistically significantly (t = 7.48, p < .05)