A Study to Assess the Knowledge, Implementation of Practices Regarding Complementary Feeding among the Mothers of Infants in Selected Rural Areas of Vadodara

Abstract

Introduction:Complementary feeding is very crucial for the growth,development and overall health of infants. In selected rural areas, assess to knowledge and the implementation of practices regarding complementary feeding may be limited , Mothers of infants have challenges and gaps in knowledge and the implementation of practices.malnutrition caused 69% of dealths of children below the age of five1.Accoording to WHO “the process starting when breast milk alone is no longer sufficient to meet the nutritional requriment of infants , and therefore other foods and liquids are needed, along with breast milk”2. Objective: To assess the knowledge of complementary feeding practices,To assess the practices of complementary feeding practices,To find out the correlation between knowledge score and complementary feeding practices score ,To find out the association between knowledge score with their selected demographic variables. Methodology: A Quantitative research approach & Descriptive research design was used in research. Researcher selected 120 mothers of infants from selected rural areas of vadodara through Convenience Sampling Technique. Self- structured knowledge questionnaire & self-structured practice questionnaire was used. Result: Findings of the study revealed that 17(14.2%) of Mothers of infants had Good Level of Knowledge, where as 58 (48.3%) mothers of infants had Average level of Knowledge and only 45 (37.5%) mothers of infants had Poor level of Knowledge. And in practice level 23(19.2%) had adeqaute practice where as 69(57.5%) had moderate level of practice and only 28(23.3% ) had poor level of practice. Correlation was used for identifying the correlation between knowledge and practices regarding complementary feeding . and correlation between the knowledge and practice in that the knowledge score mean value is 1.7667 and standard deviation is 0.68272, whereas in practice mean value is 1.9583 and standared deviation is 0.65332. Result shows that there was very weak positive corrlation (r=0.003) between knowledge and practices regarding complementray feeding among mothers of infants. Conclusion: It is considered that almost mothers of infants were having good, average and poor level of knowledge. Majority of mothers of infants were having adequate, moderate and inadeqaute level of practices. It indicates that with increase in knowledge there is an increase of practices towards complementary feeding among mothers of infants.Ethical approval : Studies were conjuction with the standards for human research after the ethical permission of component authority of Parul University Ethics Committee For Human Research (PU-IECHR) prior permission / Written consent was obtained from each research participants.