Impact of documentary on knowledge levels regarding balanced diet among adolescent girls in school-setting

Abstract

Objectives: To assess the effectiveness of a nutrition education intervention between the control and experimental groups of school-going girls.Methods: Using multistage random sampling, a school-based pre-post quasi-experimental study was conducted among 472,10-19-year-old adolescent girls in Lucknow, India. The respondents were divided into a control group (CG) and an experimental group (EG). EG was exposed to a self-designed documentary on topics related to a balanced diet, while CG was not.Results: Most girls had inadequate knowledge pre-intervention (t(471) =10.8,p<.001) in both CG and EG. Post-intervention scores improved significantly [t(471)=8.496,p=.00]. The number of respondents with "inadequate" knowledge decreased from 130 to 79 in EG, while those with "adequate" knowledge increased from 34 to 86.Conclusion: Overall, the findings underscore the effectiveness of audio-visual aid in filling the knowledge gap among adolescent girls in a school setting. It also emphasizes the need to implement customised and targeted nutrition education programmes for adolescent girls. The results show that knowledge levels of respondents were below average, which upon nutrition education intervention, improved. Hence, the same can effectively improve nutrition literacy among adolescents.

Keywords

• nutrition education
• adolescent girls
• health literacy
• vulnerable group
• knowledge