Parental Perception of Over-nutrition Among Students in Primary Schools, Pa Pong Subdistrict, Doi Saket District, Chiang Mai Province

Abstract

This study was a cross-sectional study that posed an objective to study the perception of overnutrition among students of parents of grade 1 to 6 students at Ban Pa Pong School and Ban Pa Mai Daeng School, Pa Pong Subdistrict, Doi Saket District. Chiang Mai, semester 2, academic year 2020, totaling 191 students. Questionnaires were a tool created from a literature review to study the degree of perception of overnutrition in students' parents, consisting of two parts: perception of physical signals; and perception of environmental/behavioral signals. The data were analyzed by frequency distribution, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and Chi-square statistics that were used to find correlation.

The results showed that most of the students' parents who took the questionnaire were female, aged between 31 – 40 years. Most of them did not go to school and were engaged in employment. The family had a monthly income of 5,001 – 10,000 baht. Family characteristics were mostly single families. Most of the students in their parents were female, aged between 10-12 years old, and most of their nutritional status was normal.

The cognition study found that the majority of parents and students had a low level of visual perception including physical signal perception and environmental/behavior signal perception at a low level. The study compared parents' personal factors with perceived levels of overnutrition among students' students by gender, age range, educational level, occupation, and congenital disease. It was found that gender, age, occupation and comorbid factors of the students' parents found no difference in the level of perceived overnutrition among the students. As for the difference in parents' educational level factor, it was found that there were different in perception of overnutrition among students with statistically significant at the 0.05 level. In addition to a comparative study of information on the level of perception of overnutrition among students of parents of students with normal nutrition with the level of awareness of overnutrition among students of parents of students with overnutrition, it found no difference. The results of this study can be used in educational planning and building an understanding of the promotion of nutritional status and healthy food consumption among students, as well as to increase participation in nutrition among parent’s students with overnutrition.