Mothers' sources of information about feeding their children ages 2 months to 54 months

B R Carruth1, J D Skinner

  • 1Nutrition Department, University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Knoxville,Tennessee 37996-1900, USA. bcarruth@utk.edu

Journal of Nutrition Education
|April 16, 2002
PubMed

The purpose of this study was to determine sources and types of information about child feeding practices that were received by 62 mothers with children aged 2 to 54 months. Each mother participated in 10 or 11 in-home interviews. Data analyses included chi-square testing for differences in information sources over time and content analyses to develop information themes. As sources, citations for professionals and magazines decreased, with no significant changes for relatives over time. After 24 months, newspapers, television, and friends were reported more frequently than earlier. Mothers reported multiple and concurrent information sources over time. Thus, nutrition educators have concurrent and multiple opportunities to disseminate nutrition information.

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