Comparison of the Effectiveness of Health Belief Model with the Theory of Planned Behavior on the Nutritional Education of Mothers with Underweight Children Aged 6-36 Months

Nutrition is one of the factors affecting children’s health and empowering mothers is the most important way to prevent underweight. This study is conducted to compare the effectiveness of health belief model (HBM) and the theory of planned behavior on the nutritional education of mothers with underweight children aged 6-36 months in Gonabad City, Iran.

The study was of a field trial type carried out on 93 mothers with underweight children aged 6-36 months. The mothers were randomly assigned into two experimental groups and one control group. The data collection instruments included two researcher-made questionnaires whose validity and reliability were established and were self-administered. The intervention was performed based on the above-mentioned models. The data were collected immediately and three months after the intervention and were analyzed through SPSS software (version 22, IBM Corporation, Armonk, NY, USA), using analysis of variance (ANOVA), chi-square, Fisher’s exact test, Bonferroni test, Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test, and Shapiro Wilk test at 0.050 level of significance.

The mothers’ mean age was 31.24 years old in the three groups and they were homogeneous with regard to other demographic variables. After the intervention, all the constructs of both models, except for the perceived barrier construct, in the two experimental groups showed a significant increase in comparison with those of the control group.

The educational intervention based on the theory and model had a considerable effect on increasing mothers’ nutritional knowledge and the factors affecting underweight. The results also showed that the theory of planned behavior was more effective than the health belief model.