A STUDY OF NUTRITIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDES OF ELITE COLLEGE ATHLETES IN IRAN

AZIZI, M.; RAHMANI-NIA, F.; MALAEE, M.; MALAEE, M.; KHOSRAVI, N. A study of Nutritional knowledge and attitudes of elite College Athletes in Iran. Brazilian Journal of Biomotricity, v. 4, n. 2, p. 105-112, 2010. This study designed for understanding the nutrition knowledge and attitude of elite college athletes in Iran. A researcher-built questionnaire which was developed to measure subject’s nutrition knowledge and attitude,distributed to 297 female (age 21.8 ±1.8 years) and 298 males (age 22.8 ± 1.9 years) randomly. The questionnaire contained 15 nutrition knowledge questions and 15 nutrition attitude questions. The collected data was analyzed by t-test, one-way ANOVA and Pearson correlation coefficient (p<0.05). The mean nutrition knowledge and attitude score for male and females was 52.36±6.2; 50.61±5 and 54.3±6.3; 52.03±5.8 respectively. Nutrition knowledge and attitude score in P.E. females was significantly higher than other major (p<0.05), while the difference between P.E. males and other major was not significant. There was a significant positive correlation between nutrition knowledge and attitude among males (r= 0.424, p ≤ 0.01) and female (r= 0.422, p ≤ 0.01) elite athletes. Based on the result of our study the knowledge of Iranian college athletes is moderate, and these suggest that nutrition knowledge and attitudes of Iranian college athletes need to improve.