Association between Social Cognitive Theory Constructs and Fruit and Vegetable's Consumption in Adolescent Girls

Background: unfortunately just a few numbers of children and adolescents use sufficient amounts of fruit and vegtabless. this study aimed to investigate the association between social cognitive theory constructs and fruit and vegetables consumption in adolescent girls. materials and methods: this is a descriptive analytic study conducted on 308 high school girls (first grade) who were selected by cluster sampling method in shahrekord, chaharmahal and bakhtiari province, iran. a researcher made questionnaire was used to collect the needed data like demographic variables, substructures of perceived self-efficacy, outcome expectations and outcome evaluation. in order to investigate the fruit and vegetables consumption status, the standard questionnaire of food frequency questionnaire (ffq) was used. the data were analyzed using spss 18.0 software. results: the mean scores of outcome expectation, outcome evaluation and perceived self-efficacy were 35.52±16.26, 34.60±20.21 and 32.55±19.81, respectively of the total score of 100. the mean scores of fruit and vegetables consumption and vegetables consumption were reported as 1.45±0.68 and 1.47±0.95, respectively, as well. there was a direct significant correlation between adolescents’ perceived self-efficacy and outcome expectations (p = 0.034, r = 0.040). a direct significant correlation was also observed between fruit consumption and both outcome evaluation (p = 0. 033, r = 0.012), and perceived self-efficacy (p = 0.051, r =0.064). conclusion: regarding the status of fruit and vegetables consumption and the mean scores of social cognitive theory constructs and relationship between them and also the importance of promoting healthy diet in the critical period of adolescence, it seems necessary to use efficient patterns and theories of health education and promotion has been considered.