Abstract:
Eating behavior established in adolescence has been linked to the risks of many
chronic illnesses in adulthood. However, limited information is available about
adolescent eating behavior and its determinants. The present study aims to examine
and predict healthy eating behavior in Thai early adolescents using attitude, subjective
norm intention, and self-schema. The participants were 191 early adolescents studying
in grade 7-9 in public schools in Bangkok Metropolis.
A series of questionnaires consisting of the Attitude towards Healthy Eating
Scale, the Subjective Norm for Healthy Eating Scale, the Intention to Eat Healthily
Scale, and the Healthy Eater Self-Schema Scale was used to assess attitude, subjective
norm, intention, and self-schema, respectively. The Healthy Eating Index using the
Nutrition Flag and Thai RDA as referencees, was used to determine healthy eating
behavior of all participants through a 3-days food diary. All participants were also
trained for food recoding to ensure the accuracy of their intake data. The INMUCAL
program was used to analyze participants’ nutrients intake and SPSS version 11.0 was
used to perform all statistical calculations.
Results from hierarchical multiple regression revealed that subjective norm
was the only significant predictor of intention in all 191 participants (p < .05). Only in
the girls group did attitude predict healthy eating intention. However, intention failed
to predict healthy eating behavior in all subjects (p > .05), whereas self-schema
predicted healthy eating behavior in the boys group (p < .05). A moderator effect of
self-schema on the relationship between intention and healthy eating behavior was not
found in this study.
These findings suggest that factors predicting healthy eating behavior among
adolescent girls and adolescent boys are different. Thus, different strategies based on
specific cognitive factors should be employed when promoting healthy eating behavior
in early adolescents.