Nutrition education is a communication activity with a group. of people-´and the communication media has-made great contributions, whether used alone or- combined with face-to-face instruction, to the most of nutrition education programs in developing countries. The media include pamphlet, leaflets, slides, short films, posters, calendars, comic books and charts, etc.
CARE, -the American non-profit, civil assistance organization for the relief and community development in underdeveloped and developing countries, is one. of the most active agencies´ for nutrition education in. Korea. CARE has developed many kinds of nutrition education media. Particularly, two kinds of pamphlets, "What Shall We Eat?" and "Let´s Stay Healthy" were published in 1975 and 1977, respectively as a part of the CARE´s integrated program of-pre-school feeding, nutrition education, and family planning. These ´pamphlets have been widely distributed to the housewives in rural and suburban area, but without any pre-test. For their better effects, they should have been pre-tested whether their contents had corresponded with the interests and the educational and economic backgrounds of readers, and thus whether the contents had been understandable and applicable to the "readers´ family food life. Thus this study was undertaken to evaluate the pamphlet, "Let´s Stay Healthy" and to get some information´s for the next revision of the pamphlet.
The pamphlet explains mainly, the importance of protein for health and the malnutrition and the diseases with inserted pictures. The pamphlet was distributed to 48 housewives randomly selected from the rural, area of Siheung Kun and 68 ´housewives from the suburbs of Suwon city. After they had read through ´the pamphlets during one week, they answered the questionnaire containing 39 questions. The results were as follows:
(1) The degrees of interests:-Of 116 respondents´ 80.5% were interested in reading the pamphlet and the inserted pictures were answered (82.6%) to. be also interesting and corresponding with the contents. The percentages were similar through all age, educational, and economic groups. But many readers (29.8% , especially older or tow-education group, responded that they could hardly presume the contents by the picture atone.
(2) Hardness and easiness: About half (51.8%) of the respondents could not understand the meanings of some or many of the words used in the pamphlet and they, particularly low-education group, wanted the pamphlet to had been written in easier words or mostly by pictures.
(3) Comprehensives: Sixteen questions were asked in practical and applied ways rather than on The nutrition knowledge itself of the pamphlet. Without any significant differences among all age, educational, and economic groups, the respondents showed high degrees of comprehensives (the mean score; 81/100). But they seemed not to understand correctly the basic nutrition concepts which did not be explained in the pamphlet and need to be explained more precisely in the coming revision.
(4) Effectiveness: Through the pamphlet, 49.1% of the respondents have learned the nutrition knowledge´ most of which they had not known before and 20.2% have newly learned about, the half of the information of the pamphlet. Many (62.3%) of the respondents have become more interested in the family nutrition.
With the wide spread of mass communication media, mass media has become one of the most effective methods of nutrition education in developing countries. More than half of the respondents had continuously contacted with the nutrition (or family living) programs of mass media such as radio, TV, newspapers, and women´s magazine. Among them, over -90% had put into practice, or at least had tried to practice the information´s. The result, suggested the possible effectiveness of nutrition education through mass media, especially, radio which 75.9% owned, if used in Korea.
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