Understanding Facilitators and Barriers to the Selection of Dietetics as a major by African American students

• Main Author: Felton, Teena M.
• Other Authors: Human Nutrition, Foods, and Exercise
• Format: Others
• Published: Virginia Tech 2014
• Subjects: qualitative study; dietetics students; college; African-Americans
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10919/42664; http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-05152007-165730/

Less than 5% of registered dietitians are African-American individuals. Little has been done to investigate reasons for the paucity of African-American professionals in the dietetics field. The specific aim of this study was, therefore, to explore facilitators and barriers to the selection of dietetics as a major by African-American students. Individual elicitation interviews and focus group discussions with African-American students currently enrolled as dietetics and non-dietetics majors at Virginia Tech were conducted. It was hypothesized that African-American students who chose to major in dietetics did so primarily for altruistic reasons, whereas African-American students who did not major in dietetics did so, in part, because of a lack of awareness of the major. Forty African-American students (mean ± SD age = 21.4 ± 1.4 years) participated in individual elicitation interviews and focus group discussions. Hypotheses were supported. In addition, personal interest was indicated by both dietetics and non-dietetics students as a factor in selection of major. Non-dietetics students believed that barriers to the selection of dietetics as a major included poor advertising and poor recruitment efforts. Directors of didactic programs in dietetics may need to create more visible recruitment and retention programs to increase the number of African-American students majoring in dietetics. === Master of Science