The Iranian female high-school student's knowledge and attitude toward breastfeeding

BACKGROUND: Breastfeeding is not only a perfect food for the infant but also is a living fluid with many features. It provides the infant's physical growth and is responsive to its emotional needs. Since determining the knowledge and attitude of girls in this period and promoting, it is considered as the main principle in motivating them for choosing this method in future. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This descriptive-correlational study was conducted to determine the knowledge and attitude of 630 high-school students on breastfeeding at a selected public high school in Tehran, Iran in 2018. A researcher-made questionnaire was administered to collect the data, to determine the validity of the tool; content validity was used and to determine its reliability, a test re-test method was applied. Data were analyzed by the nonparametric tests of Chi-square, multiple comparisons, and Spearman correlation coefficient. RESULTS: The results showed that 80.3% had moderate knowledge. The mean score of knowledge in the human sciences group was significantly higher than others. Furthermore, the attitude of 22.5% of girls was positive, 77.5% had no idea, none of them had negative attitudes. There was a statistically significant difference between the mean score of attitude of the students in groups of knowledge (good, moderate, and weak) (P < 0.01), and multiple comparison tests showed that the positive attitude score in the moderate knowledge group was more than the attitude score in weak and good knowledge. CONCLUSION: The results indicate that there is an unbiased attitude about the moderate knowledge of different aspects of breastfeeding among pre university students, although they have a moderate knowledge on a complete and successful breast feeding.