Use of Song As an Effective Teaching Strategy for Nutrition Education in Older Adults

The objective of this study was to explore whether singing an educational song would be effective in improving older adults' knowledge about nutrition. We used a randomized controlled design to determine whether singing an educational song would result in increased nutrition knowledge in a low-income population of older adults compared to a control group of similar adults who did not sing the song. Eighteen congregate nutrition sites were randomly assigned to the treatment or control group. Analysis via independent samples t -test showed the knowledge gain mean scores for the treatment group were significantly ( P  < 0.05) greater than those of the control group. This study supports a unique new approach to increasing nutrition knowledge of older adults by using music.