Performing Department
School of Agricultural Sciences
Non Technical Summary
The overarching goal of this Smart Food Consumption (SFC) Program to is create a self-sustaining, experiential learning model for undergraduates (especially future agriculture teachers) to engage in nutrition education, research, and extension. In each spring of four years, twelve undergraduate research fellows will be recruited from Sam Houston State University (SHSU) and other minority-serving institutions to engage in eight weeks of training in June and July in Huntsville, TX where SHSU main campus is located. In the first week, the SFC fellows will be assigned to six teams under the supervision of six faculty mentors. Each of the six teams will be responsible for delivering one nutrition lesson to high school participants in the following six weeks. Twenty-four high school students will be recruited each year from Huntsville High School. The SFC fellows will educate high school participants on nutrition, food preparation, food safety, food waste management, food security, food budgeting, and healthy eating. They will also visit the SHSU teaching kitchen, food pantry, local farms, and grocery stores. Knowledge assessment will be done after each nutrition lesson. The SFC fellows will also conduct surveys and dietary analyses of high school participants to assess their nutrition knowledge and dietary behaviors before and after the nutrition intervention. This REEU program will help cultivate future agriculture teachers and researchers in nutrition education, improve food security, reduce food waste, and decrease obesity risk for high school students during their transition into adulthood and/or higher education.
Animal Health Component
80%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
0%
Applied
80%
Developmental
20%
Goals / Objectives
The overarching goal of this Research and Extension Experiences for Undergraduates (REEU) is to provide research and extension experience for undergraduate students and prepare them for the agricultural education workforce or graduate studies with exceptional skills. With the intention to create a self-sustaining, experiential learning model for undergraduates in food and nutrition science, the specific goals of this Smart Food Consumption (SFC) Program are to 1) create a feasible nutrition intervention tool to improve youth food consumption behaviors; 2) train undergraduate SFC research fellows (especially future agricultural educators) in implementing the nutrition intervention; 3) improve the research and extension skills of SFC research fellows; and 4) incorporate the nutrition intervention tool in the training of students in the agriculture teacher certification program and nutrition education program such that it will be implemented in the high school agricultural science classroom after the successful completion of this REEU program. The specific objectives of the nutrition intervention are to 1) increase awareness of the importance of food shopping/consuming behaviors in shaping weight outcomes; 2) enhance SFC high school participants' food budgeting and preparation skills given limited income; and 3) improve the healthfulness of participants' and their families' shopping carts and plates while increasing food security and reducing food waste.
Project Methods
The evaluation of the proposed intervention will include qualitative and quantitative methods. The qualitative method will be based on focus group interviewing carried out by a trained facilitator. After starting with an ice breaker, specific discussion points will be tackled as follow: general impressions, main lessons learned, application of lessons learned, perception of dietary behavior changed, and lastly suggestions for improvement or changes in the program. The research fellows will lead the focus group discussions with the high school participants in week 7, whereas the PI and co-PI will perform the focus group interviews with the research fellows in week 8. Furthermore, the participants' parents will be invited to partake in a focus group interview during week 3 and then again in week 7. The purpose of these interviews is two-layered. First, we will try to have a more detailed overview of our participants' dietary and shopping behaviors from the baseline interview. Then, in week 7, we aim to verify if the participants transferred their acquired knowledge to their parents and tried to implement what they learned during the lectures. These parents' focus interviews can be administered in an online format.The quantitative method will be based on administering different questionnaires to the participants. These questionnaires will be divided into two levels. Level 1 will include the individual knowledge assessment after each lesson. Level 2 will include a broader assessment comparing pre- and post-intervention Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices (KAP), i.e. in week 2 and week 7 for high school students. With the help of their mentors, undergraduate fellows will collect and analyze the weekly, pre- and post-intervention assessment data.Lastly, an exit survey will be administered to all fellows and participants to get their feedback about the SFC program and nutrition intervention in general in weeks 7 and 8, respectively. Based on the exit survey and focus group interviews, we can modify the program each year.A difference-in-difference analysis will be used to evaluate the effects of the nutrition intervention and consultation service on the food shopping behaviors of high school participants' families. This approach was successfully implemented in a previous quasi-experiment led by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania (Ulrich et al., 2015). The expenditure shares from the pre- and post-intervention grocery receipts will be calculated and compared for both the participants' families (intervention group) and their relatives (control group). The difference between the intervention and control groups will be assessed. Paired sample t-test will be used to evaluate participants' individual food shopping behaviors.As the REEU program is designed for a duration of four years, long-term follow-up plans will be developed to evaluate changes in participants' health outcomes, especially weight outcomes. Meanwhile, we will conduct long-term follow-up surveys to see how the SFC fellows incorporate nutrition education/research into their student teaching, agriculture teacher position, or graduate studies (if applicable). A one-year follow-up survey will be administered to all fellows and participants by email or phone. PI and co-PI will compile all the assessment data each year and compose annual reports and a four-year summary.