Perception and Service Needs about Nutrition Education of Pregnant and Lactating: To Compare with Pregnant and Lactating Women, Health Specialist and College Women

Ahn, Hong Seok; Lee, Youngmee; Oh, Yu Jin

Abstract

The major purpose of this study was to develop the nutrition education contents and material through the basic data from the service provider and the consumer. And also, to find out the differences of attitude and needs between the service provider (SP, breastfeeding specialist), present consumer (PC, pregnant or lactating women) and future consumer (FC, college women). There were types of questionnaires, which consisted of needs and attitudes toward child and maternal nutrition, as well as the personal characteristics of the study subjects. The subjects consisted of 113 breastfeeding specialists who served at medical related institutions, 197 pregnant or lactating women and 309 college women. The self-administered questionnaires from subjects were collected from October to November 2005 in Seoul and Kyunggi Province. The data was analysed by SPSS Win 12.0, ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis test. The results of this study were as following: 1) The most important determining factors on breastfeeding was 'medical specialist's support' (3.51) and the next one was 'knowledge of maternity care practice' (3.39). And the importance score of determinating factors on breastfeeding was significantly different between each group (p<0.001). The groups of consumer (3.50 at PC and 3.59 at FC) considered the service provider (3.32) more important. The service providers considered a more effective determining factor to be "husband and family support" and "peer support" than the others (p<0.001). 2) To compare the effective factors of breastfeeding practices between the three groups, the service providers were more significantly considered than the others such as "attendance of intervention program" (p<0.001). But the PC group considered the most effective factors was "mother's job after delivery". 3) The self-evaluated score of the breastfeeding knowledge was the most high in SP; the score was significantly different between groups. The knowledge score of nutritional aspects in human milk was most highly evaluated. But maternity care practice and public acceptance marked the lower evaluation score than other issues. 4) The desirable types of educational material was mass media, and the next was printed matter such as booklets. Two kinds of consumers preferred DVD or VCR tapes than and the service provider group (p<0.001). 5) The priority contents of nutrition service PC group wanted the information about infant care more than maternal care (p<0.05), but FC group's priority was significantly different compared with PC group (p<0.001). The priority of SP group pointed out the information of practical child care methods. The results showed the needs of nutrition service, education channels, and perception toward effective factors on consumer behavior changes were significantly different between each group. Thus the result of this study may suggest that consumer oriented nutrition service programs must be developed.