Changes in Primary School Children's Behaviour, Knowledge, Attitudes, and Environments Related to Nutrition and Physical Activity.

Rigorous evaluation of large-scale community-based obesity interventions can provide important guidance to policy and decision makers. The eat well be active (ewba) Community Programs, a five-year multilevel, multistrategy community-based obesity intervention targeting children in a range of settings, was delivered in two communities. A comprehensive mixed-methods evaluation using a quasiexperimental design with nonmatched comparison communities was undertaken.

Reliability of questionnaires to assess the healthy eating and activity environment of a child's home and school.

Childhood overweight and obesity are a growing concern globally, and environments, including the home and school, can contribute to this epidemic. This paper assesses the reliability of two questionnaires (parent and teacher) used in the evaluation of a community-based childhood obesity prevention intervention, the eat well be active (ewba) Community Programs. Parents and teachers were recruited from two primary schools and they completed the same questionnaire twice in 2008 and 2009.

Improving weight status in childhood: results from the eat well be active community programs.

Objectives: The eat well be active Community Programs (ewba) aimed to prevent obesity among children aged 0-18 years in two Australian communities from 2006 to 2010.

Methods: ewba was a multi-strategy intervention in children's settings. The evaluation was quasi-experimental, including a before and after survey with intervention (INT) and non-randomised comparison (COMP) communities.

The challenges of quantitative evaluation of a multi-setting, multi-strategy community-based childhood obesity prevention programme: lessons learnt from the eat well be active Community Programs in South Australia.

Objective: To describe the rationale, development and implementation of the quantitative component of evaluation of a multi-setting, multi-strategy, community-based childhood obesity prevention project (the eat well be active (ewba) Community Programs) and the challenges associated with this process and some potential solutions.

Design: ewba has a quasi-experimental design with intervention and comparison communities. Baseline data were collected in 2006 and post-intervention measures will be taken from a non-matched cohort in 2009.

Reliability and relative validity of a child nutrition questionnaire to simultaneously assess dietary patterns associated with positive energy balance and food behaviours, attitudes, knowledge and environments associated with healthy eating.

Background: Food behaviours, attitudes, environments and knowledge are relevant to professionals in childhood obesity prevention, as are dietary patterns which promote positive energy balance. There is a lack of valid and reliable tools to measure these parameters. The aim of this study was to determine the reliability and relative validity of a child nutrition questionnaire assessing all of these parameters, used in the evaluation of a community-based childhood obesity prevention project.