School Food Handlers’ Readiness In Preparing School Supplementary Feeding Programme Meals And The Effect Of The Intervention Among The Schoolchildren
Loading...
Date
2016-12
Authors
Mat Issa@Zakaria, Zuraini
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
The School Supplementary Feeding Programme (SSFP) was introduced at schools to improve the nutritional status of schoolchildren and ultimately to improve children’s social skills and academic competency, as well as reduce problem behaviour. To ensure children benefit from the programme, good quality school meals must be prepared by cooks. Unfortunately, limited studies have been conducted in Malaysia to identify the cooks’ stage of change (SOC) and their knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) level in preparing nutritious meals. Similarly, no studies have been carried out to examine the outcomes related to consumption of SSFP meals in primary schools in Malaysia. Therefore, a cross-sectional study was conducted among the school cooks (n = 231) in Kelantan to identify their SOC and KAP level in preparing SSFP meals. An intervention quasi-experimental study was performed among the randomly selected cooks in primary schools, and also the SSFP recipients of the two selected schools in Kota Bharu, Kelantan to evaluate the outcomes related to SSFP consumption. The studies were conducted between January and August 2014. Prior to participation, consent was obtained from all the respondents. Data were subjected to Rasch analysis using Winstep version 3.80.1, and SPSS version 16 for statistical analyses. The results revealed that a majority (74.1%) of the school cooks were in the maintenance/action category of SOC in preparing low fat foods, and more than 85 per cent had excellent HMP-KAP attitude (96.8%) and practice (88.74%) level. However, half had a moderate level of HMP-KAP knowledge (50.65%) and about 38 per cent had poor HMP-KAP knowledge. After being exposed to an intervention programme,
only the school cooks’ HMP-KAP knowledge level significantly improved (F (2.397, 112.7) = 6.178, p = 0.002 < 0.05) while the outcomes related to SSFP meals consumption revealed that most of the variables did not exhibit significant changes, except for the participation rate (TJT = 311.000, z = 3.005, p < 0.05), the amount of SSFP meals consumed by the recipients (F (1, 126) = 14.390, p < 0.05, partial eta squared = 0.103), and their height (F (1.845, 236.202) = 81.656, p < 0.001, partial eta squared = 0.389) and weight (F (1.814, 234.037) = 12.748, p < 0.001, partial eta squared = 0.090). The study also revealed that teachers reported improved social skills (F (1, 71) = 35.658, p < 0.001, partial eta squared = 0.334) and problem behaviour (F (1, 86) = 50.427, p < 0.001, partial eta squared = 0.370) of the SSFP recipients at the intervention school compared to the control school. The findings indicate that a longitudinal study involving larger, long-term randomised designs are needed to verify these findings and also to evaluate the impact of interventions on the outcomes following SSFP consumption. In addition, modification of the intervention programme as well as regularly and continuously exposing the school cooks to intervention may improve the outcomes and enhance the implementation of the SSFP programme.
Description
Keywords
School Supplementary Feeding Programme , improve the nutritional status of schoolchildren.