The Survey of Knowledge, Attitude, and Performance of Mothers toward Otitis Media in Children

Otitis media is the second most common pediatric disease in the world and family, especially mothers, play an important role in prevention of this disease in children. The present study aimed to determine the knowledge, attitude, and performance of mothers regarding preventive behaviors of otitis media in infants.

This analytical cross-sectional study was conducted by random sampling method on 240 mothers of infants referring to health centers of Arak City, Iran, in 2021. Data were collected by a questionnaire whose reliability and validity were previously confirmed and were analyzed with SPSS software using descriptive and analytical statistical tests including Spearman correlation coefficient and independent t-test. P < 0.05 was considered as the significance level.

The mean age of children was 11.40 ± 6.05 months and 194 (80.8%) mothers were housewives. 16.2% of mothers had desirable knowledge about otitis media and 67.1% had moderate knowledge. 92.5% of mothers had desirable attitude and 7.5% had moderate attitude. Besides, performance score was desirable in 58.3% of mothers, moderate in 39.2%, and weak in 2.5%. There was a significant relationship between knowledge score with attitude of mothers (r = 0.320, P < 0.001) and performance (P < 0.050). The demographic variables including mother’s education, number of children, family income, knowledge, and attitude predicted 0.118% of maternal performance variance in prevention of otitis media in infants.

Most mothers had weak or moderate knowledge and performance about prevention of otitis media in infants. Mother's background factors including education and household income are effective in this field. Therefore, educational planning is necessary to improve the knowledge and performance of mothers.