The rate of overweight children has been steadily rising. The purpose of the
study was to develop a reliable and valid instrument to evaluate the effect of a
nutrition and fitness education program on middle school children (aged 11-14 y) at
risk of or overweight (above the 85th percentile on the NCHS BMI-for-age growth
charts). A Nutrition Knowledge Questionnaire was developed utilizing the Delphi
Technique to determine content validity. The instrument’s reliability had a Cronbach’s
alpha coefficient of .70, indicating good internal consistency. A control trial with a
pretest-posttest group design was used in which 30 subjects were assigned to either
the control (n15) or experimental (n15) groups. Both groups were assessed on
nutrition knowledge prior to (pre-testing) and following (post-testing) the twelve-week
intervention period. Paired t Tests and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) were used to
analyze the data. The mean scores for the control group, pretest and posttest, were
16.73 (sd2.915) and 16.73 (sd1.792), respectively. The mean scores for the
experimental group, pretest and posttest, were 16.53 (sd2.642) and 18.8 (sd3.590),
respectively. There was a significant increase (t(14) (2.241, p.05) between pre and
posttest for the experimental group. ANCOVA, with pretest as covariate, showed a
significant difference in scores between the experimental and control groups on
posttest (F(1)4.326, p.05). The scores for the experimental group were significantly
higher than those for the control. These results suggest that children at risk of or
overweight will increase their nutrition knowledge if exposed to this nutrition and
fitness education program