Hospital employee cholesterol screening: modification of dietary behavior.

1. The author used a survey tool to measure attitudes of individuals toward health and social factors specific to a low fat/low cholesterol diet. 2. Participants attending the cholesterol screening were healthy and already motivated to be aware of their cholesterol counts. The percent of diet pattern change was not influenced by knowledge of either a low, borderline, or high cholesterol level. 3. Although further testing of this instrument is needed, raw individual scores seem to indicate that motivated screening participants feel a diet low in fat and cholesterol has positive health implications and is not a social inconvenience. 4. There was no significant difference between the traditional and goal setting teaching methods in teaching hospital employee cholesterol screening participants to reduce dietary fat intake.