[Food and nutrition knowledge of school-age children's mothers from elementary and high school from different socioeconomic levels].
The objective of this study was to determine the degree of knowledge on food and nutrition of school-age children's mothers from Chile's Metropolitan Region and to measure the impact of socioeconomic, sociocultural and demographic variables on knowledge. A representative and proportional sample of 4,509 school-age children was chosen from Chile's Metropolitan Region and the degree of knowledge on food and nutrition on mothers of 1,985 of them was determined. The sample was stratified according to grade (I, II, IV, VI, VIII elementary school grades and I and IV high school grades), sex, type of school and geographic area. Socioeconomic status (SES) was determined through Graffar's modified method. The degree of knowledge on food and nutrition was assessed by a test based on the specific objectives pursued by the elementary school curriculum programs of the Ministry of Education and submitted to adequate statistical proofs for its content validity and reliability. Mother's schooling level mean was 9.7 +/- 4.0 y. The field study was carried out on 1986-1987. Statistical procedures included analysis of variance, Student "t" test for comparison of the means, correlation and regression. Results revealed that mothers did not know food and nutrition matters in fundamental aspects related to the observance of a healthy lifestyle, both, for themselves and their family. The degree of knowledge of food and nutrition significantly and positively correlated with SES, mother's schooling and occupation level, housing conditions (quality and sanitation) and age, and significantly and inversely correlated with the number of sons and crowding, besides of being significantly higher in urban than rural mothers. Mother's schooling level and geographic area were the independent variables with the greatest explanatory power in the food and nutrition knowledge variance (r2 = 0.1723), but mother's schooling level explains 93.2% of the explained variance. Results suggest the need to introduce, during school age, nutrition education programs focused on mother and children to improve the population life quality.
Universidad de Chile, Instituto de Nutrición y Tecnología de los Alimentos, Santiago, Chile.
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Ivanovic
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Castro
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Ivanovic
D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002677:Chile; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D004522:Educational Status; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D005260:Female; D005502:Food; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009035:Mothers / Q000193:education*; D009747:Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D013334:Students; D014505:Urban Population