Nutrition Knowledge, Attitudes, and Food Purchasing Practices of Parents

Abstract

Objectives of this study were to ascertain nutrition attitudes, knowledge, and food pur chasing practices of preschoolers' parents and to compare attitudes, practices, and knowledge of parents by type of child care program, sex, age, education level, family size, residence, occupation, nutrition training, and money spent on food eaten at home and away from home. The target population was parents, both mothers and fathers, who had preschool children attending a licensed day care center or day care home. Data were analyzed from 1,769 questionnaires. Cronbach's alpha reliabilities were computed for knowledge, attitudes, and practices, and a total score for each parent was calculated for each scale. Pearson's product‐moment correlation was used to determine relation ships among the variables and knowledge, attitudes, and practices. Differences in atti tudes, knowledge, and practices were determined by one‐way analysis of variance. Findings indicated that nutrition attitudes were more highly related to food purchasing practices than was nutrition knowledge to food purchasing practices. Education level was the predominant variable influencing nutrition knowledge, and nutrition attitude was the primary variable influencing food purchasing practices.