Nudging for Behavior Change in School Cafeterias

Summary

The main purpose of this research is to look at a school lunchroom intervention that is known to improve fruit, vegetable, and milk consumption and see how it changes in the long run and if it affects the child's behavior permanently. The intervention will include the giving the vegetables descriptive names, moving the fruit to right next to the register and in attractive bowls, and increasing the amount of white milk served by 10%. The main forms of analyzing these results are through food preparation records, lunch sales records, and tray waste records. The first focus of this study is to see if there is a specific point in an intervention when improvement stops and therefore the intervention needs to be updated. This procedure involves looking at five similar middle schools with this same intervention over a 15 week period. The time of intervention implementation will vary by three week intervals, so the first will start the first week of school, the next school will start after three weeks of school, the next will start after six weeks of school, and the next will start after nine weeks of school, and the last will be a control school where there will be no intervention implementation. These intervals will help eliminate bias dealing with the beginning of the year excitement and seasonal effects. Food preparation records and lunch sales records will be collected from the school for the 15 week period. Tray waste will be recorded by having 200 randomly selected trays measured and collected twice a week over the 15 week period. This focus will help schools manage when they need to change their intervention so that improvements will not stop. The second focus of this study is to see if the children's improvement is kept when the intervention has stopped. This procedure will involve looking at a similar school to the other 5 schools. But unlike the other schools, this one will have the first 5 weeks without the intervention, then 5 weeks with the intervention, and then another 5 weeks without the intervention. Food preparation records and lunch sales records will be collected from the school for the 15 week period. Tray waste will be recorded by having 200 randomly selected trays measured and collected twice a week over the 15 week period. This second focus will help identify how effective this intervention is in permanently changing dietary habits.

Conditions

• Behavior, Child
• Food Selection

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Basic School Lunchroom Nudges

The intervention consists of three components: 1) serving fresh fruit in attractive bowls in at least two locations on the lunch line; 2) providing descriptive names for the vegetables; and 3) increasing amount of plain milk availability by 10% and placing it in front of the chocolate milk. For the vegetable naming intervention, researchers first developed, printed, and laminated descriptive vegetable name cards (2"x4"). Some examples included "Savory Collard Greens," and "\[School Mascot\] Salad." Cafeteria staff affixed name cards to the serving line sneeze-guards in front of the vegetables for the day. For the fruit intervention, we purchased and delivered two ceramic bowls to the intervention school. The cafeteria staff filled the bowls and put them in different locations on the lunch line. For the milk intervention, cafeteria staff increased the amount of plain milk available by 10% and placed plain in front of chocolate milk in the coolers.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Cornell University

  collaborator OTHER

• Columbus City School District

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Ohio State University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Andrew S Hanks, PhD · Ohio State University

• Haleigh Gaines, MS,RD · Ohio State University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

10 Years

Max Age

15 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2016-01-11

Primary Completion

2016-04-27

Completion

2016-04-29

Countries

• United States

Study Locations