Assessment of Maternal Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice regarding Nutrition of Children Aged 12-36 Months and Its Related Factors in Qom Province, Iran, Using a Self-report Method

Nutrition is the first and most important factor facilitating mother-child interaction. Maternal nutritional knowledge, attitude, and practice are effective in many stages of child growth and development. Therefore, the present study was aimed to investigate the knowledge, attitude, and practice of the mothers of 12 to 36-month-old infants regarding child nutrition and its related factors using self-report method, in Qom, Iran.

This cross-sectional descriptive-analytical study was conducted on 120 mothers with 12 to 36-month-old infants. For sampling, out of 28 health care centers located in Qom, 3 centers from the lower-, middle-, and upper-class areas were selected by the simple random sampling method. Subsequently, a total of 120 mothers were selected from these centers. The data related to the maternal knowledge, attitude, and practice regarding child nutrition were collected using a self-report questionnaire. Data analysis was performed in SPSS statistical software using t-test, ANOVA, and Pearson correlation.

With respect to the infantile gender, 55% of the infants were female. Based on the results, 68.3%, 58.3%, and 40% of the mothers had good knowledge, attitude, and practice with regard to nutrition. Furthermore, maternal nutritional knowledge (P=0.018) and practice (P=0.015) showed a significant relationship with their education level. However, there was no significant relationship between maternal nutritional knowledge, attitude, and practice and their occupation, infantile gender, history of previous referral of the infant, number of children in the family, and infant's birth order (P>0.05).

Based on the findings, maternal nutritional knowledge, attitude, and practice were not at a good level. Therefore, it is required to improve maternal nutritional knowledge, practice, and attitude.