Abstracts Category : Other

The Development of Best Practice Recommendations forTeaching Health Education Skills in High School

by Aubrey Whewell

The purpose of this study was to examine theperceptions of school health education experts to determine theNHES skills that best support the healthy behavior outcomes inspecific health content areas so that school health teachers willhave guidance on which skills to teach in specific content areas.The specific aim of this investigation involved determining whatskills/skill priorities, based on expert opinion, are most likelyto impact healthy behavior outcomes for each school healtheducation content area. An expert elicitation design was utilizedwith School Health Education panel members and content expertsincluding representatives from the original and updated NationalHealth Education Standards as well as individuals representing theHECAT content area and HECAT general contributors. A total of 39completed surveys were returned. Overall, the majority ofrespondents were white (93%), females (83%), with more than 25years of experience in the school health education field (37%).Additional characteristics included being licensed in healtheducation (27%), Registered/Licensed Dietitian (20%) and CertifiedHealth Education Specialists (17%). A majority of respondents (63%)indicated they hold a Doctorate degree with 33% having a Mastersdegree. The All Content Area respondents are primarily female(80%), white (93%), and indicated having more than 25 years ofexperience in the field of health education (60%). More than halfof the All Content Area respondents (53%) indicated having aDoctorate degree and 40% reported having a health educationteaching license. Of the All Content Areas respondents, 73% percentidentified their experience in the field as curriculum development,HECAT reviewer/contributor, K-12 health education, and 67%identified their experience as NHES developer/contributor. Of thespecific content area respondents, the majority were white (93%),females (87%) with 21-25 years (40%) of experience in the field.Seventy-three percent of the specific content area respondentsreported having a doctorate degree, 53% identifying theirexperience/role in the field as curriculum development and almosthalf (47%) identified their experience/role in the field as a HECATreviewer/contributor. The respondents identified, for each healtheducation content area, the skills/skill priorities they believedto most likely impact health behavior outcomes in the 9th 12thgrades. The selected skills/skill priorities are based on the AllContent Area expert feedback only for all content areas excludingthe Healthy Eating and Sexual health content areas. For the HealthyEating and Sexual Health content areas the selected skills/skillpriorities are based on the feedback from the All Content Areaexperts and then supplemented with the content specific expertfeedback as the other content areas received too few responses(<6) from the content specific experts. The top skills/skillpriorities selected by the All Content Area experts for AOD were:Analyze how peer values and norms influence healthy and unhealthyAdvisors/Committee Members: Dake, Joseph (Committee Chair).