Assessment of villagers' perceptions towards nutrition communication in rural Nepal

Abstract

This article examines the perceptions of villagers of Nepal towards effective modes of nutrition communication affecting their nutritional health. Based on the villagers' experience of the nutrition communication used in various vitamin A projects surveyed in three districts of Nepal, a majority of the villagers strongly believe that a nutrition project cannot be effective in achieving its goals unless the local villagers are consulted during the process (defined to include design, development, implementation, and evaluation). They also believed that, among other modes of communication, a group discussion might be very effective in village nutrition communication. Similarly, based on the survey data analysis, it was found that the use of multiple media had a strong positive impact on the villagers' familiarity with and participation in the vitamin A projects surveyed. However, there was not any indication that such impact had a significant positive relationship with the reported level of knowledge of food items promoted by the vitamin A projects. Likewise, there was no suggestion of any strong relationship between the reported level of knowledge and the intake of food items promoted by the projects surveyed.