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Evaluation of a Nutrition Education Website for Children
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Sun Hee Kim, Taisun Hyun
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Korean J Community Nutr 2006;11(2):218-228. Published online April 30, 2006
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 Abstract
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- This study was carried out to evaluate the usefulness and the effectiveness of the nutrition education website 'ifood (http://ifood.or.kr)' for children. A total of 262 children (5th and 6th graders) participated in the self-education program using the website which consisted of 4 sessions every two weeks. In each session, they were asked to answer some questions on the comprehensiveness of each topic while navigating the website. Nutrition knowledge (20 items), dietary attitudes (7 items), and dietary behaviors (10 items) were evaluated using questionnaires before and after the education. After the education, the usefulness and readability of the website was also evaluated. Most (97.2%) of the responders reported that the education using this website was helpful, 97.3% thought that the contents were reliable, 90.1% responded that the contents were easy to understand, and 88.8% answered that they would revisit 'ifood'. The menus they liked best were "Interesting games" for 35.8%, "How can I cook?" for 17.8%, "How can I become slim" for 16.4%. This website might be more attractive by providing a "greater variety of contents in detail", "more music, motion pictures and images", "more interesting games". After the education, there was a significant increase in nutrition knowledge scores from 10.9 to 13.1. Although the total scores of dietary attitudes and dietary behaviors did not improve, there was a significant increase in each of some questions. These results showed that "ifood", a nutritional education website, was desirable in reliability, aesthetics and enjoyability, and was effective in improving nutrition knowledge and some of dietary attitudes and behaviors in children.
- [English]
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Development of a Nutrition Education Website for Children
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Taisun Hyun, Miyong Yon, Sun Hee Kim, Nan Hee Kim, Suk Mi An, Sun Mi Lee, Hyun Jung Chi, Myeong Hee Sun, Chun Hwa Oh, Seon Hee Wang, Mi Kyung Hong
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Korean J Community Nutr 2003;8(3):259-269. Published online June 30, 2003
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Abstract
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- The purpose of this study was to develop a nutrition education website for children, especially those around the 4th-6th grade levels. Among the already existing websites providing nutritional information for children, 7 websites with comparable amounts of information were evaluated in terms of their topics, credibility, content, ease of use, and aesthetics. In addition, a survey was conducted to assess the need for nutrition information among 305 elementary students. The food pyramid was the topic offered most often on those websites. Information on nutrients, digestion, food safety, nutrition labeling, and healthy eating habits were available on the websites. Some of those websites also provided games or quizzes to attract the children's interest. However, seine of the websites did not give any information on the person responsible for providing the information, which is most important in determining the credibility of the website. Other problems were that some information was too difficult for children, and some of the websites did not provide a way to search for information. According to the survey results, the topics that children wanted to know about were 'desirable weight', 'cooking', 'correct food choice', 'weight control method', 'calories consumed during exercise' but, they did not have a high interest in 'asking questions', 'books with nutrition messages', 'under weight', 'negative effect of weight control' and 'helping hungry children'. Based on these results, we developed a new nutrition education web-site, ifood' (http://ifood.or.kr). We focused on helping children develop healthy eating habits by providing information which is easy and practical for children. However, we neither included the program to assess their dietary intake, nor provided entertaining background sounds, which children like. Also, the game section is composed mainly of quizzes. Therefore, we need to further develop exciting games to teach nutrition to children. In the near future, the newly developed website should be evaluated by children regarding understandability and coverage of the contents as well as usability and design, and then revised to improve the educational effect.
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