Results
Background characteristics of
participants
A total of 455 children were enrolled in the study, about 60% were
11-12 years of age and 56% were girls. The children were studying in
year six (51.9%) or seven (48.1%) during the implementation of the
intervention. A total of 413 (90.8%) children participated in both the
tests: 419 (92.1%) in the pre-intervention test and 447 (98.2%) in the
post-intervention test. IDIs were conducted with seven participating
teachers aged 30-45 years.
Intervention compliance
Table 1 shows the attendance rates (percentages) of children in the
education sessions. About 71% (86.1% in Belagavi, 64.4% in Raichur
and 63.1% in Bagalkot) of the children attended a majority (6-7) of the
sessions. Average attendance ranged from 5.7 to 6.3 sessions across the
districts.
[Insert Table 1]
Impact of the intervention on
knowledge
Baseline or pre-intervention knowledge of several aspects related to
anaemia, iron and iron-rich food, IFA supplements and deworming were
low, with 13.1% to 46.0% of the respondents providing correct answers
to the test questions. A significant increase was seen in the percentage
of children who provided correct responses to the questions after the
implementation of the intervention. The percentage of children with
correct scores increased by 7.3-49.0 percentage points for the tested
questions except for Q6_6 where most of the children did not mention
”dates” as a source of iron-rich food (Table 2).