School and Home Contributions to Dietary Behaviors of Rural Youth

Abstract

Purpose

This study examined dietary behaviors of rural youth at school and at home and sociodemographic differences.

Design

A cross-sectional design was used.

Setting

The study took place in five rural schools in the Southwestern US.

Sample

Student participants (N = 751) were in 3^rd-8^th grades.

Measures

Consumption of fruits, vegetables, dairy, and soda/pop, at school and at home, were measured using a modified 7-day recall Youth Risk Behavior survey for nutrition instrument (CDC, 2011); Sociodemographic data.

Analysis

Descriptive statistics, frequency tables and MANCOVA were used.

Results

Following a natural log transformation of the dependent variables, there were significant multivariate effects in dietary behaviors across schools (Wilks’ λ = 0.962, F_{(16, 2539.4)} = 2.05, P = 0.0082) and location (school v. home; Wilks’ λ = 0.849, F_{(4, 831)} = 36.94, P < 0.0001). Follow-up tests showed students in some schools reported higher consumption of fruit, vegetable, and soda at home than school, although most reported consuming less than one serving per day of fruit, vegetables, and dairy across settings. There were no significant main effects for gender/grade/ethnicity across behaviors.

Conclusions

Findings highlight poor dietary behaviors of rural youth as well as school/home differences that can help inform efforts to support optimal dietary behaviors of this population. Results should be interpreted considering limitations of the self-report nature of collected data and missing data.