Traditional and Modern Teaching Methods in Improving Eating Behaviors of Female Elementary School Students in Chabahar, Iran

Implementation of nutrition education in schools is one of the strategies to improve nutrition behaviors.
This study aimed to compare the efficacy of traditional and modern education on knowledge, attitude and dietary behavior of female students in Chabahar in 2014.
This was a semi-experiential research conducted on two groups of 70 students, selected randomly from two primary schools in Chabahar County, Iran. Training intervention was then made into the first group using traditional method, and in the second group using multimedia package. Three nutritional variables of the target students, namely knowledge, attitude, and behavior were measured using researcher-designed questionnaires filled out by the students in three stages: before, immediately after, and two months after training. The data collection tool was a self-made questionnaire. The validity confirmation and the reliability of available samples were approved and SPSS 16 software was used for data analysis.
Before the intervention, no significant differences were observed between the two groups in terms of nutritional knowledge, attitude, or behavior (P = 0.947, P = 0.14, and P = 0.71, respectively). After the intervention, knowledge scores in both groups increased significantly (P 0.05).
Discussion and The results confirmed the fact that knowledge does not necessarily lead to a change of attitude in an individual’s health behavior. Therefore, nutritional knowledge is not the only factor affecting dietary behavior. In other words, poor nutrition is a multifactor problem and other factors may be responsible for it as well.