Comparing the health behaviors of mothers of infants under 1 with diarrhea and other infants hospitalized in the pediatric ward of Shohadaye Khalije Fars Hospital, Boushehr, Iran, 2015-2016

More than 14 million infants die in the first year of life, and diarrhea is the major cause of mortality among these infants.
This study aimed to compare the health behaviors of mothers of infants under 1 year with diarrhea and other infants in pediatric wards.
This descriptive-analytical study recruited 246 infants under one year old hospitalized in the pediatric ward (123 infants with diarrhea and 123 without diarrhea). We collected the data using a questionnaire consisting of two parts: demographic information and health behaviors. To determine the face and content validity of the questionnaire, we surveyed 10 faculty members. Test-retest reliability was checked by a pilot study on 25 patients in each group. Data were analyzed using frequency (percentage), mean, standard deviation (SD), and range. As the health behavior variable was non-normal, we performed chi-squared, Mann-Whitney U, and Kruskal -Wallis test in SPSS 19, with the significance level of 0.05
In this study, 123 infants with diarrhea had the mean age of 8.16 months and the standard deviation of 2.65 and 123 infants with other diseases had the mean age of 6.24 months and SD of 3.30. Results showed that there was no significant relationship between demographic information and the incidence of disease in infants. The health behavior score was 16.8 (SD: 2.39) in the group with diarrhea and 17.3 (SD: 2.06) in the group without diarrhea, indicating no significant difference in these infants’ health behaviors.
Given the lack of a significant difference in health behaviors among these children, we conclude the positive and negative aspects of mothers’ health behavior and can attempt to increase general knowledge, especially the mothers’ health behaviors.