Nutritional knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of mothers on the nutritional status of school children – A study from south India

Abstract

Undernutrition is a major serious health concern that contributes to mortality and morbidityamong young children in India. There are few studies on the relationship of mother’s nutritionKnowledge, Attitude and Practice on the nutritional status of school children. It is a cross-sectionalstudy aimed to associate the nutritional Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) of mothers and thenutritional status of children. About 100 children and their mothers were selected, according to theinclusion criteria, such as children with the specified age group between 6-12 years. We collected theinformation related to socio demographic profile, Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of mother usingthe developed questionnaire adopted from FAO manual. The nutritional status of the children wasassessed through anthropometric measurement. The SPSS 16.0 version was used for the statisticalanalysis. The study results showed that the illiterate mother secured higher mean KAP scores.Although, the socio economic status of the family influenced the nutritional Knowledge, Attitudeand Practice score of the mother, the statistical significance was not found. The higher meannutrition knowledge, attitude and practice score of the mother was associated highly with the highermean height, weight and BMI of the children.