Evaluating Be A Food Groupie's Effectiveness: Matched Comparison Results of a Health/Nutrition Education Program Delivered at a Mississippi Children's Museum

Background: Child-focused health education programs that can be widely disseminated by children’s museums (CMs) can play an important role in supplementing mandated school health educational requirements that resource-limited schools may have a difficult time fulfilling (Amis et al., 2012). For example, although Mississippi legislates that children in Grades K-8 receive 45 minutes per week of health education, only 67% of school principals surveyed in 2010 reported that ≥75% of students received required health education instruction (Molaison et al., 2011). However, evaluations of the effectiveness of health programs provided by CMs are rare. Methods: To help fill this gap, we conducted a matched comparison evaluation using pre-/post-tests among 446 intervention and 524 comparison students (N=970) in Grades 3-5 recruited from 11 Mississippi schools to determine whether HealthWorks!’s Be A Food Groupie (BAFG) program improved health/nutrition knowledge across three domains: 1) comprehending food labels, 2) understanding serving sizes, 3) understanding food groups. Results: After controlling for pre-test scores, ANCOVA results indicate that BAFG intervention students scored significantly higher on the post-test; 1) across all three domains and 2) across all three grades as compared to comparison students. Third-, 4th-, and 5th-grade intervention students had an average gain score of 13.5, 16.6, and 17.5 percentage points, respectively. Third-, 4th-, and 5th-grade comparison students had an average gain score of 3.1, 5.0, and -1.6 percentage points, respectively. Discussion: When CMs and schools collaborate to develop long-term partnerships to enhance children’s informal learning opportunities that—like BAFG—meet state-mandated requirements, educational impacts can be enhanced.