2024 Volume 32 Issue 4 Pages 265-273
Objective: To improve the nutrition and dietary questionnaire for athletes competing at the National Athletic Meet, we identified learning factors associated with eating a balanced diet comprising staple foods, main dishes, and side dishes and validated questions that can be used as targets and evaluation indicators in nutrition education.
Activities: The participants were 181 individuals (147 aged 14–18 years and 34 aged 19–28 years) who responded to a questionnaire survey for the first time between 2016 and 2020 with an enhanced designation. The items analyzed were attributes, health status, health behaviors, frequency of intake of staple foods, main dishes, and side dishes, eating behaviors, learning factors, and environmental factors (23 items excluding attributes). Binomial logistic regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between learning (outcome expectancy [OE] and self-efficacy [SE]) and environmental factors, with meals comprising staple foods, main dishes, and side dishes as the dependent variable.
Activity evaluations: One hundred seven respondents (59.1%) ate a balanced diet comprising staple foods, main dishes, and side dishes at least twice daily. The OEs and SEs significantly associated with this eating behavior were “eat a full staple meal (rice),” “eat a complete meal comprising staple food, main dish, and side dish at every meal,” and “eat a side dish at every meal.” The number of questions was reduced to eight, excluding items that were not related to the frequency of intake of a balanced diet or skewed the distribution of responses.
Conclusions: By clarifying the learning factors associated with eating behaviors, we created a questionnaire that could be used to target and evaluate subsequent nutrition education. Future studies should verify the practicality and usefulness of this questionnaire in nutrition education.
