Effect of game-enhanced nutrition education on knowledge, attitude and practice of healthy eating among adolescents in Ibadan, Nigeria

Abstract

Nutrition education, using board game as a complementary teaching strategy, was carried out among adolescents in Ibadan with the aim of improving their knowledge, attitude and practice of healthy eating. One hundred and forty-three secondary school students selected from 4 local government areas in Ibadan, using multistage sampling procedure, constituted the sample for this study. Pretest–Posttest quasi-experimental non-equivalent groups design was adopted for this study. Questionnaire with reliability coefficients of 0.73 (knowledge), 0.75 (attitude) and 0.77(practice) was the instrument for data collection. Frequency counts and percentages were used to analyse the demographic data of the participants while ANCOVA was used to test hypotheses at 0.05 alpha level. Nutrition education had a significant main effect on adolescents’ knowledge, attitude and practice of healthy eating (effect size = 36, 12.1 and 31.3%, respectively). There was no significant main and interaction effect of gender and geographical location on knowledge and practice, but a significant main effect of geographical location on adolescents’ attitude was observed (effect size = 13.9%). Game-enhanced nutrition education is an effective method of improving adolescents’ knowledge, attitude and practice of healthy eating. Hence, amusing and creative strategies should always be incorporated into nutrition education programmes for adolescents.