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.
This research was designed: (1) to identify clusters of tasks and determine frequency of task performance of Extension food aides in Iowa and (2) to examine relationships between tasks performed by aides and place of residence, length of time on the job, age, and educational level of aides. A task list was developed, validated by experts, and pretested. Food aides responded on a 3‐point scale to the frequency of performance of 124 tasks. Data from the 167 respondents were used to derive a 124 by 124 correlation matrix. Tasks with intercorrelations above .35 were clustered and 10 clusters were formed. Based on mean scores for task clusters, the task clusters performed most frequently were teaching concepts related to nutrition, supplementing resources, and purchasing food. Demographic charac teristics of food aides were not significantly correlated with individual tasks. The content of the findings could serve as a guide for training of aides in other states, and the research model for task analysis might be replicated in other states.
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