Development and evaluation of a nutrition education intervention on Head Start parents' ability to mediate the impact of TV food advertising to their children

Despite the introduction of other technological innovations such as computers, television remains one of the most powerful sources of communication. Children continue to make up a major portion of the viewing audience, and food that is advertised during children's probing continues to be of poor nutritional quality and includes nutritional misinformation.;Over the past 20 years, researchers in the field of nutrition have recommended consumer education programs and curricula that can provide parents with skills to assess the poor nutrition information presented through television advertising and programs directed to their children.;The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a media literacy nutrition education intervention for Head Start parents, designed to increase parents' (1) awareness of the impact of television advertising on their preschool children's food requests and food choices; and (2) skills in using television food commercials to teach their children about healthy food choices and how to critically view television advertising. The study used a quasi-experimental, pre-post, intervention-control condition design with a convenience sample. The same sample (n = 35, in four groups) participated in a food safety education control condition that was followed immediately by the nutrition education intervention condition. Outcome evaluation measures included parents' understanding of the persuasive techniques of commercials, ability to distinguish between claims and truths in advertising, and outcome expectations, values, self-efficacy, and behaviors in relation to talking about TV ads with children while coviewing or in response to purchase requests in the grocery store. Paired t-tests revealed no change pre to post in the control condition, but significant effects were found after the intervention condition in terms of understandings about TV advertising (p < .001) attitudes towards TV ads (p < .001), outcome expectations (p < .05) and values (p < .01), self-efficacy (p < .001), and behaviors (p < .001). The results suggest that a media literacy nutrition education curriculum can help Head Start parents better understand the use of persuasive techniques in ads directed at children, distinguish between claims and truths in food commercials, and respond appropriately to purchase requests by their children for food advertised on television.