• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.41-63
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• 2021

The purpose of this study was to investigate the nutritional knowledge and eating behavior of middle school students in Gwangju area in order to provide basic data for the development of home economics curriculum that can help the students form healthy eating habits. For this purpose, a self-administered questionnaire was distributed to middle school students in Gwangju area. A total of 330 questionnaires were collected by convenience sampling and analyzed using SPSS(Statistics Package for the Social Science) Version 20.0 for Windows. Results of this study are as follows. First, school curriculum session ranked top(31.82%) on the list of sources for middle school students to acquire nutrition knowledge. Second, the mean score of nutrition knowledge of all respondents was moderately high(14.33 points out of maximum 20 points). In terms of nutrition knowledge by gender, female students had a higher level of nutrition knowledge in the 'Food' domain than their male counterparts(p<0.05). With regard to nutrition knowledge by grade, Grade 9 showed a higher score than Grade 7 and 8(p<0.001). Third, the mean score of eating behavior of all respondents was at an average level(69.75 out of 100 points). In terms of eating behavior by gender, male students showed a higher score than their female counterparts(p<0.05). In particular, male students had higher scores than female students for the following items: "I exercise regularly after school"(p<0.001); "I regularly eat meal three times per day"(p<0.01); "I don't skip breakfast"(p<0.01); and "I don't eat sweet food often"(p<0.01). In terms of eating behavior by grade, Grade 9 showed higher scores than Grades 7 and 8 for the following items: "I eat meal out of thankfulness for those who have prepared food"(p<0.01) and "I eat grains for every meal"(p<0.01). Finally, with regard to eating behavior depending on the level of nutrition knowledge, the 'Upper' and 'Middle' groups had higher scores for eating behavior than the 'Lower' group, indicating that a lower level of nutrition knowledge resulted in a lower score in eating behavior. Based on the above results, home economics teachers responsible for dietary education should have a greater sense of mission and pride and make more efforts to improve nutrition knowledge and eating behavior of middle school students.