The effect of a food and nutrition management program for preschool children at Child Development Center in Tumbol Rai Noi, Ubon Ratchathani Province

Abstract

The purposes of this research were as follows: to study the effect of food and nutrition management program for preschool children at the child development center in Tumbol Rai Noi,Muang district, Ubon Ratchathani Province; to compare the average scores of nutrition promotion behaviors of preschool children before and after the experiment of food preparation among teachers, parents in experimental group, and comparison group; to compare the average scores on nutrition promotion behaviors of preschool children after the experiment of teachers, cooks, parents between the experimental group and the comparison group. Before and after the study, the researcher used the quasi-experimental research model type and Two Group Pretest-Posttest Design with two sample groups-cooking teachers and parents of preschool children aged 3-5 years attending the Child Development Center. The simple random sampling was made from 101 people. Divided into two groups, the experimental group consisted of 50 students and a comparison group of 51 people. Data were collected from May 2019 to August 2019. The research instruments consisted of tools used in the experiment and tools used to collect data questionnaires. The statistics used for data analysis were percentage, mean, standard deviation, and paired t–test independent t-test

            The research findings were as follows:

1. Results of a comparison of average scores of nutrition promotion behaviors of preschool children in the experimental group and the comparison group before and after the experiment indicated that the experimental group before the experiment had the average score at a good level. After the experiment, the average score was in a very good level. After the experiment, the average score increased by 0.15 points. When comparing the average scores of nutritional promoting behavior of preschool children before the experiment and after the experiment, the researcher found that there are statistical differences (p-value < .000). As for the comparison group, before the experiment, the average scores were in a good level. After the experiment, the average scores were in a good level. After the experiment, an average score increased by 0.13 points. When comparing the average scores of nutritional promoting behavior of preschool children before the experiment and after the experiment, it was found that there were statistical differences.
2. Results from a comparison of average scores of nutrition promotion behaviors of preschool children between the experimental group and the comparison group after the experiment indicated that the experimental group and the comparison group had a 0.20 point difference of the average score of nutrition promotion behavior of preschool children. And when comparing the differences between the groups, it was found that the experimental group had a higher mean score than the comparison group with statistical significance (p-value <.000).