NUTRITIONAL BEHAVIOUR AMONG WOMEN ATTENDING ANTENATAL CARE IN GOMBE HEALTH FACILITIES

Abstract

This work is on nutritional behaviour among women attending antenatal care in Gombe health facilities. The survey research design was used for this work. The population of the study consisted of 326 women who attended antenatal care in health facilities in Gombe state within the period of six (6) weeks. This population serves as the sample size for the study. The instrument was designed by the researcher and had six (6) different sections. Section 1 elicited information on location and work experience. Section 2 sought for information on nutritional behaviour of women and had 15 items, Section 3 looked for information on nutritional practices of women with 15 items, while Section 4 elicited information on types of nutritional food eaten by women with 6 items. Section 5 sought for information on the nutritional problems of women with 9 items and Section 6 on the factors influencing types of food eaten by women with 10 items. This was validated by 3 experts that are not below the rank of a senior lecturer from the Department of Physical and Health Education. A copy of the draft was given to them for the purpose of face and content validation, appropriateness of items, clarity of statement in the instrument and whether or not the items are related to the subject under study. Necessary corrections and observations were duly made. The observation done by the experts were duly followed. The corrections gave rise to the instrument that was used for the collection of information of the study which was pretested using 40 pregnant women that were not part of the main study and the reliability coefficient of the instrument was established at 0.72, the Kuder Richardson Formula 20 and the Cronbach Alpha Coefficient method of checking the internal consistency of an instrument were adopted for establishing the reliability of the instrument which was considered very high and was there for use for the main study. The result shows that there is significant difference in the nutritional behavior among women attending antenatal care based on location as well as there was a significant difference in the nutritional practice of women attending antenatal based on work experience. It was recommended among others that this result be sustained through lectures, seminars and workshops during antenatal visitations in health facilities.