Effectiveness of various nutrition education teaching methods for high school students: a case study in alabama, United States.

This study examined a nutrition education program consisting of two content sessions: food-label reading, and food pyramid guide. In each session two groups of nutrition interns utilized four teaching methods: role-play/video presentation/display, grocery store tour, overhead transparency and lecture, and power point lecture, among a group of (N = 29) ninth grade, high school students. The purpose was to determine the most effective method of delivering nutrition education to high school students. Analysis using the Kruskal Wallis One-way Analysis of Variance showed that the combination method of role-playing/video presentation/visual display was most effective in the food pyramid session (χ² = 8.13, p = .04). While this method was given the highest rank in the food-label reading session it was not statistically significant. These results show that a combination of methods classified as the teacher's style, is more effective than a style that involves a single teaching method.