Primary-school-aged children inspire their peers and families to eat more vegetables in the KiiDSAY project: a qualitative descriptive study

Journal article


Karpouzis, Fay, Walsh, Adam, Shah, Smita, Ball, Kylie and Lindberg, Rebecca. (2024). Primary-school-aged children inspire their peers and families to eat more vegetables in the KiiDSAY project: a qualitative descriptive study. BMC Pediatrics. 24(1), pp. 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12887-024-04643-z
AuthorsKarpouzis, Fay, Walsh, Adam, Shah, Smita, Ball, Kylie and Lindberg, Rebecca
Abstract

Background: While vegetable intakes in Australia remain sub-optimal across all age groups, children are rarely consulted about their ideas on how to increase consumption. Qualitative research involving children provides an opportunity to consider their views. The aim of the Kids initiative inspires Dietary Success in Adults and Youth (KiiDSAY) project was to explore the views of school-aged children, who had participated in a school-based nutrition education program, about inspiring their peers and families to eat more vegetables.

Methods: A total of 26 children (15 boys) aged 10–12 years from four primary schools in New South Wales, Australia, participated in seven focus group interviews. Purposeful sampling was used to recruit participants. The study involved open-ended semi-structured questions conducted via Zoom that were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic analysis with deductive and inductive coding in NVivo.

Results: Four major themes emerged: (i) taste; (ii) family environment; (iii) healthy eating; and (iv) change makers; with subthemes that were embedded within Social Cognitive Theory and Ecological Model of Health Behaviour theoretical frameworks.

Conclusions: Children’s inputs hold great potential for informing future interventions, particularly when designing or refining school-based nutrition programs. Children offered suggestions on how to inspire increased vegetable consumption among their peers and families that could be taken into consideration for future research and practice. These included: cooking activities in the home and school settings using recipes that creatively hide/mask/enhance the flavour of vegetables, involving positive role models and supportive school environments. Additionally, children recommended a sequential approach to the delivery of recipes starting from fruit-based and transitioning to vegetable-based recipes. Given the challenges faced in increasing children’s vegetable consumption, particular focus on future research in this area is warranted.

KeywordsSchool; Children; Nutrition education; Vegetable consumption; Qualitative research; Focus groups
Year01 Jan 2024
JournalBMC Pediatrics
Journal citation24 (1), pp. 1-15
PublisherBMC (BioMed Central) Springer
ISSN1471-2431
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1186/s12887-024-04643-z
Web address (URL)https://bmcpediatr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12887-024-04643-z#article-info
Open accessOpen access
Research or scholarlyResearch
Page range1-15
Publisher's version
License
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Online09 Mar 2024
Publication process dates
Accepted13 Feb 2024
Deposited17 Jul 2024
Supplemental file
License
File Access Level
Open
Supplemental file
License
File Access Level
Open
Supplemental file
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File Access Level
Open
Additional information

© The Author(s) 2024.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

FEAST Trial registered 14th December 2020 with the Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ACTRN12620001347954).

Place of publicationUnited Kingdom
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