Abstract
Background: Unhealthy dietary patterns and nutrition literacy level are some of the major modifiable risk factors for non-communicable disease in Saudi Arabia. Theoretically, nutrition knowledge, self-efficacy for healthy eating and perceived social support are believed to play a role in healthy lifestyle adoption, but there is a limited local evidence of these constructs from university samples in the Jazan region. Design: A descriptive study.Objective: To describe the nutrition knowledge, self-efficacy and perceived social support of female students and staff of Jazan University and to investigate their relationships with self-reported Body Mass Index (BMI). Methods: A cross-sectional design was used. The researcher gathered the data using a self-administered online questionnaire, filled out in Arabic and English, which included the following items: sociodemographic items, eight multiple-choice items on nutrition knowledge, a seven-item self-efficacy scale and a six-item perceived social support scale (both on 5-point Likert scales) and self-reported height and weight. Internal consistency was measured for the Likert scales with Cronbach’s alpha and for the knowledge items with KR-20. Spearman correlation coefficient, Kruskal-Wallis test and multiple linear regression were used to look at associations. A p-value of 0.05 for all). Conclusion: This preliminary sample showed that nutrition knowledge was relatively high, but varied by topic. Self-reported BMI was most closely related to perceived social support, and not to nutrition knowledge. Although these preliminary findings from a small convenience sample should be interpreted with caution and future studies with a larger, more adequately powered sample are needed to confirm these results, the results do suggest that social-support oriented components would be a potentially useful addition to campus nutrition education programming.