Abstract:
This trial School Community Nutrition Education Project commenced in June 1991 at a large rural Queensland secondary school. For evaluative purposes a quasi-experimental design was employed with two observation schools providing the comparison groups. Planning in the program school commenced with initial needs assessment via student, teacher, parent and canteen worker questionnaires and was followed by the formation of a working group including representatives of all these groups. Development of objectives resulted in the identification of four areas the working group wished to address; (i) curriculum, (ii) school canteen, (iii) parental education and involvement and (iv) community awareness of the project. Social Learning Theory was selected to provide some direction for curriculum development. Statistically significant improvements on knowledge and a number of attitude and belief items were achieved for the total student group at the program school but not at observation schools. Improvements on targeted food behaviours were detected for females at the program school and the total student and male groups at the private observation school. This paper will present preliminary results of student impact and outcome evaluation with pertinent extracts from process evaluation.