142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition

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Utilizing photo elicitation to investigate determinants influencing nutritional behaviors in college students

142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition (November 15 - November 19, 2014): http://www.apha.org/events-and-meetings/annual
Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Theresa Hunter, MPH, MS , School of Public Health, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
Background: Many undergraduate college students make poor nutritional decisions. Understanding the factors and determinants that influence their nutritional decisions and food choices can help students to change their current behaviors.

Methods: 300 undergraduate students enrolled in entry level nutrition health courses participated in this project. Each student identified interpersonal, intrapersonal, and environmental factors that influence their food choices and nutritional decisions. Students took pictures of each of these factors then reflected on each item. All data was collected and then analyzed for thematic purposes.

Results: This project proved to be an effective tool to help students understand what factors impact their food choices. Factors such as accessibility, availability, cost, and time were among the most common among all students.

Conclusions: The social ecological framework is ideal to use in college settings for students to identify various factors that impact nutritional habits. Understanding food choices among college students from an ecological perspective can also inform college policies and practices and resources that address improving college student nutrition.

Learning Areas:

Advocacy for health and health education
Conduct evaluation related to programs, research, and other areas of practice
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Public health or related education
Social and behavioral sciences
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
Discuss the benefits of using photo elicitation in college level health education courses. Describe how using photo elicitation helps students to identify health determinants. Explain how using the socio-ecological model as a framework helps students to identify factors influencing their food choices.

Keyword(s): Nutrition, Participatory Research

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have worked on several projects focused on innovations in health education and school health courses.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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