Better nutritional knowledge is related to healthier food choices and higher-quality nutrition, which affects the health of the population. Throughout the thesis, our goal was to assess the nutritional literacy of elementary school pupils from the 3rd 5th and 7th grades of two schools in Ljubljana. We have set two hypotheses, namely that there is no significant difference between the nutritional knowledge of the pupils from the same educational level in both schools, and that the fifth-graders' nutritional knowledge is better than that of the third-graders. The nutritional knowledge of the participating 329 elementary school pupils was assessed through a questionnaire. We examined the answers to various questions related to nutrition and utilized the chi-square test to determine in which categories of nutritional knowledge the groups of elementary school pupils differed in their answers. In comparing the answers of the two elementary schools' third-graders, we have observed some differences in their responses to the questions, however, they were not unified enough to allow confirmation, that the knowledge of the pupils of one school is better than that of the pupils of the other school. Moreover, when comparing the answers of the fifth-graders, we have observed certain differences, but we cannot say that the knowledge varies between the two elementary schools. When assessing the seventh-graders' responses, we have seen more gender-based differences than school-based ones, yet statistically significant differences have only been confirmed in a few cases. This confirmed the hypothesis that the knowledge of pupils from the two schools at the same educational level is not statistically different. When comparing the nutritional literacy of the third- and the fifth-graders, there was a significant difference between the two groups. Fifth-grade students have better nutritional knowledge than third-grade students, which we had anticipated at the beginning of the study.
|