Objective: To determine the impact of preschool teacher food-related attitudes and behaviors on child food behaviors.
Design: A twelve-week intervention and observational study with teachers completing questionnaires before and after the intervention.
Setting: Head Start classrooms throughout Virginia.
Participants: 177 preschool Head Start teachers and 1534 children.
Intervention(s): Food Friends, a twelve-week social marketing campaign, was conducted by Head Start teachers during the Spring 2007, introducing children to novel foods with food puppets, nutrition-related activities and novel food tasting opportunities. Hypotheses related to the impact of preschool teachers' food-related attitudes and behaviors on children's food behaviors were tested, and changes in teacher and child food behaviors were measured.
Main Outcome Measures: Teacher food-related attitudes and behaviors were measured/quantified. Child food behaviors were measured and compared to teacher attitudes and behaviors.
Analysis: Descriptive, correlational and t-test statistics were conducted.
Results: Teachers' and children's acceptance of novel foods improved after the Food Friends program, however, no direct correlations were found between teacher food-related attitudes and behaviors and child food behaviors.
Conclusions and Implications: Preschool teacher attitudes and behaviors may not significantly impact child food-related behaviors. More research is needed to determine effective ways of encouraging positive child food behaviors. / Master of Science
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/31878 |
| Date | 13 May 2008 |
| Creators | Stratton, Jessica Nicole |
| Contributors | Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise, Serrano, Elena L., Fu, Victoria R., Hosig, Kathryn W. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | Jessica_Stratton_Thesis.pdf |
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