Nutritional Knowledge, Attitudes and Behaviors among University Students in Turkey and the US

Abstract

This study was conducted to compare the nutritional knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of the students attending the Faculty of Education at Gazi University (FEGU) in Turkey and St. Cloud State University (St. CSU) in the US. Both samples of the study were selected with simple random sampling. 1674 university students aged 16-27 participated in the study. The first sample group comprised 889 students (female=648, 72.9 %, male=241, 27.1 %) attending Gazi Faculty of Education (GFE), while the second sample group consisted of 785 students (female=442, 57.0 %, male=337, 43.0 %) enrolled at (St. CSU). The surveys were conducted at FEGU and St. CSU during the spring and winter semesters in the 2014-2015 academic year, respectively. Gazi Faculty of Education students scored higher in the nutritional knowledge, attitude and behavior subscales of the Nutritional Attitude Inventory. In addition, although the nutritional knowledge and nutritional behaviors subscale mean scores of female and male students were approximate, there was no statistically significant difference. However, both female and male students attending St. Cloud State University had high nutritional knowledge and nutritional behaviors subscale mean scores. In conclusion, there were differences in nutritional knowledge, attitude and behaviors between university students from two different countries.