Dissertation Abstract

Factors Contributing to the Health Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices of Elementary Education Students (School Health Education).

This study investigates the educational productivity factors that contribute to the health knowledge, attitudes, and practices of school children in the fourth to seventh grades. This secondary analysis examines the data from the comprehensive School Health Education Evaluation. Nearly 30,000 students from 74 school districts in 20 states participated in the large-scale experimental study. Evaluation of four different school health curricula, measuring many student, teacher, and parental variables yielded cognitive, affective, and behavioral outcomes from the control and program classrooms.

The present research probes the multivariate model of educational productivity, which purports that nine factors of: ability, development, motivation, quantity and quality of instruction, school, peers, the home, and media or leisure activities influence student learning outcomes. These factors are the independent variables in the analysis, employing the multiple regression technique. The dependent variables are the posttest scores and ratings in health knowledge, and health-related attitudes and practices. The results indicate that factors of ability, development, quantity and quality of instruction, school, peers, the home, and media significantly contribute to the explained variance in the three outcomes.

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