Relationship between Breakfast Consumption and Self-Efficacy, outcome Expectations, Evaluation and Knowledge in Elementary Students

Background: The breakfast is the most important meal of the day that its regular consumption is effective on individuals' physical, psychological and social health. Given the high prevalence of irregular consumption of breakfast among students, this study has been designed to investigate breakfast consumption behavior and its related factors within social cognitive theory framework.Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out on 360 primary school students female (52.3%) and 154 male (47.7%) who were out schools of Isfahan using cluster-random sampling The data were collected in a self-reporting form by researcher made questionnaire with a significant reliability and validity The data were analyzed by SPSS software using independent t-test, one way ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficient, and multiple regression analysis.Results: The average breakfast consumption (in a week) score of 2.4 with a standard deviation of 1.7. The 10.5% of students were eating breakfast every day. There was a significant relationship between breakfast consumption and self-efficacy, outcome expectation and outcome evaluation. There was an inverse relationship between students' age, and economic situation and breakfast consumption. The results of multiple regression test showed that there is a significant relationship between self-efficacy (0.145 beta), type of school (0.631 beta), and student age (0.402 beta) and having breakfast and it predicted 24.3% of breakfast consumption variance.Conclusion: The results of this study showed that eating breakfast is not desirable in students. Self-efficacy is a predictor of breakfast consumption in students. Therefore, educational intervention seems necessary to increase self-efficacy and breakfast consumption rate.