A follow-up study of the small group teaching approach used in the Texas Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program/Food Stamp Project

Since its inception in 1968, the method most commonly used in the implementation of the federally funded Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP) has been that of one-to-one contact. Limited-income homemakers were usually taught in their homes by paraprofessionals employed and trained to teach nutrition by the state Extension services across the country.;In 1981-1983 new education methods were tested in several states to determine more cost-effective and cost-efficient ways to implement EFNEP. In Texas the experimental method of limited one-to-one contact plus group teaching plus follow-up telephone contact was tested. In comparison to the one-to-one method, it was found to be a cost-effective and cost-efficient way of teaching nutrition.;A follow-up study to the 1981-83 Texas EFNEP/Food Stamp Project was conducted four years later in 1986. The purpose was to determine whether project participants in the experimental method had retained knowledge of nutrition gained and were still using food-related practices adopted during their participation in the original project.;Data were available for 101 experimental group participants in the original study and 52 of these were interviewed in the present study. In the present study, the average index nutrition score of these participants decreased slightly when compared to their score at the end of their participation in the program in 1982. This difference, however, was not statistically significant.;There was an increase in the average index score of food-related practices made by the 52 homemakers in the present study when compared with the average index score made by them four years ago. These homemakers not only retained their knowledge of nutrition at about the same level as it was at the end of their participation in the original program, but in the case of food-related practices, adoption was maintained and continued to increase after participation.;Some individual and family demographic characteristics of participants seemed to have made a difference in degree of knowledge of nutrition retained. Those with less education and income-per-capita tended to do less well than those who had more education and economic resources available. Only one characteristic appeared to make a difference in retention of food-related practices adopted. Those who worked outside the home full-time appeared to do less well than those who were full-time homemakers.