الفهرس 
AcknowledgementOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Preschool period is a time of rapid growth and development as well as a time for developing good dietary habits. Children at the preprimary age are not responsible for their food supply and the quality of their nutrition.(7,26) However, they cognitively ready for learning about food, nutrition, and positive health habits.(5,28,29) Because of changing family lifestyles, many children spend part or most of their days at day care programs.(13,14) At such places the staff assumes a portion of the parents’ responsibility.(15,16) The influence of care-providers on food habits augments that of parents and other family members.(17,21) Thus preschool care-providers’ nutritional knowledge, and practices is an important factor influences effectively the development of good food habits of young children. The overall objective of the present study was to determine the level of nutritional knowledge, opinions, and practices of care-providers that were working directly with preschool children at kindergartens and day-care centers in the six educational and social districts in Alexandria. A sample of thirty-five kindergartens from the six educational districts, and a sample of thirty-two day-care centers from the six social districts in Alexandria were included in the study using the stratified systematic random method. The two samples were distributed according to the density of the Kindergartens and day-care centers in every district. Every type kindergartens or day-care center was considered to be included in proportion to its presence in a district. All preschool care providers in the selected kindergartens, and day-care centers were involved in the study; their total number was 343 preschool care-provider. For the purpose of the study six of them who were dealing with children younger than three years of age had been excluded from the sample. Data were collected by means of interview and self administered questionnaires that were conducted to obtain information about care-providers’ Sosiodemographic characteristics included age, marital status, educational background, training, years of experience. Information about care-providers’ nutrition knowledge regarding preschoolers’ growth and development, basic principles of nutrition, nutritional diseases, its effects on children’s cognition and skills, and Egyptian preschoolers’ nutritional problems. The questinnaires also obtain information about care-providers’ nutritional opinions regarding preschoolers food likes and dislikes, the practice of feeding the preschool children, and the practices that can be made for enhancing vegetables preferences. The questionnaires also obtain information about care-providers’ nutritional practices regarding guidance the children during mealtimes, their activity as role models, nutritional experiences that provided during various learning activities, frequency of implementation of educational methods to simplify the nutritional concepts, and their coordination with parents regarding feeding preschool children. An interview questionnaire was conducted for the managers of kindergartens/day-care centers to obtain information about the duration of the preschoolers, the number of children/care-provider, meals and /or snacks that were provided to the preschoolers, the availability of nutritional assessment instruments, and the presence of canteen and the kinds of food that were available to the preschoolers via canteens. An observation schedule was designed to obtain information about presence of demonstrations related to food and nutrition in the classrooms, presence of kitchen, care providers’ records about nutritional status assessment and children’s feeding problems. A pilot study was carried out to test the reliability of the designed questionnaires. The questionnaires were tested on 15-care providers in the Ideal Kindergarten that is attached to the Educational Center at the Faculty of Kindergarten in Alexandria. Adjustments of the questionnaires were performed and put in its final form. The fieldwork started on July 1996, and ended on October 1996. Once the questionnaire forms were filled, the collected data were coded, tabulated, and statistically analyzed.