Effectiveness of Nutritional Education Program on Knowledge Regarding Prebiotic Diet Among Elderly at Thiruvarur District

Aim and Objectives: To compare the effectiveness of the nutrition education program on knowledge regarding prebiotic diet among the elderly. Methodology: Quantitative approach and quasi-experimental design were adopted to compare the effectiveness of nutrition education program on knowledge regarding prebiotic diet among 180 elderly people (90 in the control group and 90 in the experimental group) residing in Veppathangudi, Ovalicudi, Vanjur, Vayalur villages in Thiruvarur was selected by purposive sampling method who fulfilled the inclusion criteria. The nutritional education program was administered and the level of knowledge regarding the prebiotic diet was assessed by using a self-structured knowledge questionnaire and compared with pre and post-test levels between the control group and experiment group. Results: The study findings revealed that the post-test and pre-test mean knowledge of the control group and experiment elderly was 11.40 with SD 0.88 and 3.01 with 1.26 and their control group post-test mean knowledge score was 2.70 with SD 0.57, the calculated unpaired t values (78.454 and 51.157) for knowledge between the groups indicates there was high statistically difference at p<0.0001 with more mean score among the experiment and control group elderly. Conclusion: The results revealed that the intervention nutritional education was effective in improving the knowledge regarding prebiotic diet and can be utilized as a step in a nutritional education program on knowledge regarding prebiotic diet among the elderly.