1. General evaluation and acceptance of the MEAL platform: a tool to help nutritionists and teachers to provide Nutrition Education to children.
Domínguez, A.1 ,Oliver, E. 1,2, y Cebolla, A. 1,2, Botella, C. 2,3, Baños, RM. 1,2
1 Universidad de Valencia, Valencia. 2 CiberObn. Fisiopatología de la Obesidad y la Nutrición, Santiago de Compostela. 3 Universidad Jaume I, Castellón.
INTRODUCTION
Nutrition Education (NE) during childhood has been identified as one of the most effective tools to prevent overweight and obesity during adolescence and adulthood (Flodmark, Marcus, & Britton, 2006).
Also, healthy eating during childhood have several benefits for the children, as is the development of specific cognitive abilities, as reading and optimal performance in intelligence tests (Morley &Lucas, 1997). It improves, and/or maintains or enhances the health of the children (Taylor, Evers & McKenna, 2005)
Although the benefits of NE and healthy eating during childhood are recognized, NE is not a priority in the scholar curricula in Europe.
Furthermore, professionals like teachers or nutritionists does not have the suitable pedagogical training in teaching NE. Also the amount of tools to teach NE that are available for this professionals is is limited.
In order to solve this lack of knowledge, it was developed the MEAL (Modifying Eating Attitudes and Actions Through Learning) platform, with the purpose of providing to professionals the necessary tool and information to teach Nutrition Education to children between 9 and 12 years old.
The MEAL platform is composed by 4 modules designed to teach basic elements of NE, and also to help to establish healthy eating patterns in children. Also Includes two serious games designed to reinforce the knowledge learnt by the children during the teaching of the modules.
OBJECTIVE: Study the acceptability and perceived usefulness of the MEAL platform in a sample of nutritionists and science education students.
METHOD
RESULTS
PARTICIPANTS: The sample was composed by 7 nutritionists and 39 science education students (40 women and 6 men).
INSTRUMENTS:
· The Evaluation of the MEAL platform Questionnaire is an ad-hoc instrument that measures the general perception by the professionals for the platform.
It is composed by 10 items divided in two sections:
1st section presents 3 affirmations (Eg. The MEAL platform covers the needs of the professionals to teach nutritional knowledge). The participants should indicate in a likert scale format of 5 points (1: completely disagree, 5 completely agree) how much they agree or disagree with the sentences.
2nd section presents 7 adjectives (Eg. Easy to use, Intuitive), and the participants should indicate in a likert scale format of 5 points (1: nothing, 5: a lot) how useful they perceive the platform.
The possible maximum value to obtain in this questionnaire is 50. Scoring high in the items indicates an excellent level of usefulness perception of the platform in order to teach Nutrition Education.
· The Questionnaire based on the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM, Davis, 1989) is an ad-hoc instrument created to evaluate the acceptance of the MEAL platform by the participants. It is based in the TAM by Fred D. Davis, that has as purpose to explain the determinants of acceptance of the users regarding different kind of technologies as could be computers.
It is composed by 5 Items divided in two sections:
1st section presents 4 affirmations and the participant should indicate in a likert scale format of 7 points (1: Extremely probable, 7: Extremely improbable) how probable they perceive that the MEAL platform will help them in the task of teaching NE to children.
2nd section is composed by 1 Item that evaluates in a general manner how useful the participants consider the MEAL platform to teach NE to children. Are presented in a liker scale format the options to answer , from 1(nothing) to 5 (a lot).
The possible minimum value to obtain in this questionnaire is 5. Scoring low in the first 4 items indicates a high acceptability level of the platform. Scoring high in the 5th item indicates that the participants consider useful the platform to teach NE.
PROCEDURE: During a presentation session, the MEAL platform was introduced to the professionals. The contents of MEAL were explained by each module and then the users has 5 minutes per section to freely use the platform. This procedure was repeated by each module. Also the participants were able to play with the two Serious Games. After a total testing time of approximately 30 minutes, the participants answered the questionnaires.
The results shown by the descriptive analysis are:
(1)Evaluation of the MEAL platform Questionnaire:
The Global Mean obtained was: Standard Deviation = 3.33.
The two items that shown a most positive evaluation due to the mean score were :
Item 10: (Mean=4.63).
Item 7: (Mean= 4.50).
(2) Questionnaire based on the Technologic Acceptance Model:
The Global Mean obtained in the first 4 items was: = Standard Deviation = 2.50.
The global Mean obtained in the 5th item (general perception of the platform) was 3.90.
Item 5: (Mean=3.9).
Item 1: (Mean=2.21).
The means obtained in each item for the evaluation of the MEAL platform questionnaire could be find in the table 1, and the means obtained in the Questionnaire based on the TAM could be find in table 2.
CONCLUSIONS
The general means obtained in both instruments confirms that the MEAL platform is highly accepted by the participants, especially in perceiving the platform as easy to learn to use and easy to use it. Also the platform has been perceived as a tool a that will make easier & faster to achieve more NE objectives.
The data obtained indicates that the professionals perceive the MEAL platform as a very effective tool to help them to teach NE to children.
Also the results of this study shown that is in general accepted by the professionals to use this platform to provide Nutrition Education.
The MEAL platform has a big potential to help the professionals of education to provide nutritional knowledge to children and therefore to eat healthier, and since is a digital platform could be adapted to teach NE to other populations besides Europeans, as could be in Latin America.
REFERENCES:
- Davis, F. D., Bagozzi, R. P., & Warshaw, P. R. (1989). User acceptance of computer technology: A comparison of two theoretical models. Management Science, 35(8),
-Flodmark, C. -., Marcus, C., & Britton, M. (2006). Interventions to prevent obesity in children and adolescents: A systematic literature review. International Journal of Obesity, 30(4),
- Morley, R. (1998). Nutrition and cognitive development. Nutrition, 14(10),
Taylor, J. P., Evers, S., & McKenna, M. (2005). Determinants of healthy eating in children and youth. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 96(SUPPL. 3), S20-S26.