Knowledge, attitude and practice declaration of Elderly in Ahram city toward nutrition behavior in 2013

Aging is a critical period of human life and the problems and needs of this stage is a social necessity. Taking into account of the special needs of this time such as nutrition in elderly is important but it is often neglected. This survey aimed to determiner about Knowledge, attitude and practice declaration elderly in Ahram city toward nutrition behavior. In this cross-sectional study, 200 subjects aged 75-60 years in Ahram city (Tangestan - Bushehr), participated. A four-part questionnaire is used to this study that included demographic, knowledge, attitude and feeding behavior. Data were analyzed by using SPSS version 16 software and using descriptive and analytical statistics (One-way ANOVA, T-test,Chi-square and Logistic Regression). The mean age of participants, 66.2±5.5. 67% of them were female and others were male. The knowledge score of 80% of this people was lower than expected.The average of knowledge scores didn’t have any relationship with sex, grade and job, but the attitude scores have significant different between 2 sex groups (p>0.001(, so that perceived susceptibility (p=0.001), Perceived barrier (p=0.017) and self-efficacy (p=0.004) scores in men were bigger than women. In attitude extent, perceived susceptibility, alone relationship had to grade (p=0.008). We didn’t observe any relationship between nutrition behavior in 5 nutrition groups and sex or job. Also in that extent logistic regression analysis declared that in cereal group, only perceived benefits had a significant direct effect (p=0.045), and in meat group, only perceived barrier had a significant indirect effect (p=0.020). As regards the level of knowledge scores toward nutrition are low; a detailed and comprehensive planning to train them would seem to be necessary.