Abstract:
Background: Dietary diversity is an aspect of dietary quality that indicates general nutritional
adequacy. Lack of dietary diversity is a severe problem among poor people in the developing
countries. Studies showed that monotonous diet and low meal frequency consumption has great
contribution to adolescent malnutrition. There is limited knowledge in the area of dietary
diversity and factors‘ affecting it among adolescent girls .It is also critically important to focus
on the nutritional wellbeing of adolescent girls to break the vicious cycle of inter-generational
malnutrition.
Objective: To assess the dietary diversity and associated factors among high school adolescent
girls in Jimma town 2015.
Methods: Institution based cross sectional study was conducted from 15 March 2015 to 15 April
2015.Multistages sampling procedure was used to collect data from 455 school adolescents in
Jimma town. A pre-tested interviewer administered questionnaire was used to collect data. The
data were analyzed using SPSS version 20.0. Frequency distributions of the socio-demographic
characteristics and outcome variables were portrayed. Bivariate and multivariable logistic
regression was used to measure the strength of associations between the independent and the
outcome variables. The cutoff for statistical significance was set at p-value ≤0. 05.
Result: Two hundred seventy nine (61.3%) students had dietary diversity score DDS score less
than five food groups. The Mean (+SD) dietary diversity score of school adolescent girls was
4.34(+1.41). The low dietary diversity of school adolescent girls were positively associated with
the students attending in government school [AOR =5.21 (95%CI=2.90, 9.36)], maternal
educational status [AOR=7.65(95%CI: 3.41, 17.19)] families in low economic status [AOR=1.87
(95%CI: 1.04, 3.37)] and father occupation [AOR=0.28 (95%CI: (0.08, 0.95)].
Conclusion and recommendation: The results of this study indicated that Low socio-economic
status, attending government school and lack of maternal education have significant contribution
to low dietary diversity score among school adolescent girls. Therefore both government and
non-government organization need to focus on school-based adolescent-friendly health and
nutrition education services and family economic developments.
