Dietary Supplement Product Consumption of Secondary School Students under Supervision Region 2 of Ministry of Public Health

Abstract

Most consumers might be the victims of the propaganda due to their purchasing the dietary supplement
products following the information communicated through the advertising media and their nearby
people without any considering to the right information. This survey research was then aimed to study about
the channel of perceiving information about the dietary supplement products, the referred groups affecting
their decisions to consume such products, their knowledge on such products, and their behavior on consuming such products. The other objectives were to compare their consumption behavior on the dietary
supplement products to gender, status of being young FDA member, average grade on education; and to
study the relationship between such consumption behavior and several factors (their knowledge on consuming the dietary supplement products, their average income, and the average income of their parents). The samples were 1,450 students in 4 provinces (Chainat, Singhaburi, Lopburi and Angthong) in the supervision region 2 under the Ministry of Public Health. They were randomly selected and the questionnaires were used to collect the data from March to August, 2010. The descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage, mean,S.D.) and the inferent statistics (Independent t-test, ANOVA, and Pearson’s correlation coefficient); were rendered to analyze the data in this study.

The results revealed that most consumers perceived the information of dietary supplement products
from television and their decisions to buy such products were most affected by their parents. The samples’
knowledge on such products and their proper consumption behavior were found to be at medium level.
Furthermore, it was found that men had proper consumption behavior on dietary supplement products
more than women, as respectively (p-value < 0.05). The study also showed low positive relationship between
the samples’ proper consumption behavior and their knowledge about such products, the average monthly
income of their parents, and their average daily earning. The results of this study could be applied on
the activities for the consumer potential development and the consumer protection to the Supervision
Region 2 under Ministry of Public Health and Thai FDA. They could be the guidelines for related personnel
in developing strategies to decrease the improper students’ behavior on dietary supplement product consumption.