Evaluation of Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Yazd City High School Students on the Role of Vitamin D in Health

Vitamins are organic compounds required as vital nutrients and vitamin deficiency is a venturesome condition for human body. Vitamin D deficiency is a world-wide epidemic and it’s widespread deficiency is a concern in Middle East countries. The major cause of vitamin D deficiency in many countries is the lack of sunexposure as a result of cultural norms of covering. The aim of this study was to determine the Yazd high school students’ knowledge، attitude and practice towards vitamin D effects on human health. A self-administered، structured، questionnaire، researcher made was conducted to investigate knowledge، attitude and practice of high school students. The questionnaires were given to 312 students (153boys and 159 girls) of 8 Yazd high schools. We used SPSS software and Paired t-test، ANOVA and chi2 test for analyzing the data. Of total participants، 49% were boys and 51% were girls. This study showed that among the 312 cases studied، 2. 2% had good knowledge and 39. 4% had average knowledge about vitamin D effects on human health. 21. 5% of the cases had good attitude and 18. 8% of them had goodpractice. Mean knowledge score was 15. 11+- 4. 83 of 31، mean attitude score was 18. 94+-3. 32 out of 28 scoreand، and mean practice score on vitamin D effects on human health was 13. 69 +-2. 71 of 20. There wasn’t a significant difference between knowledge and attitude among girls and boys but boys practice was better than girls and there was a significant difference in this case. Lack of knowledge،attitude and practice could endanger people''s health so developing some training programs seems to be necessary.