A Study to assess the Knowledge and Attitude of women regarding MCH services in selected Urban and Rural areas, Rajahmundry

Abstract

Maternal and Child health services deliver health care to a special population vulnerable to disease, disability, and death. These groups are women in the reproductive age group (15-45years) and children under the age of five years. These groupscover 31.6% of the total Indian population. The study aims to describe and compare the knowledge and attitude of women in selected urban and rural areas regarding MCH services. A community-based comparative descriptive cross-sectional survey was conducted among 60 women, each of 30 from urban and rural areas. Participants were selected for the study by non-probability convenient sampling technique. The data was collected by using a structured questionnaire consisting the items related to knowledge of MCH services and a Likert scale was used to assess the attitude of women towards MCH services. The collected data were analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistics. The result showed that the majority (60%) of rural women had moderately adequate knowledge and 66.7% of women in urban areas had adequate knowledge. With regard to the attitude of the women in rural areas, the majority 90% had positive attitudes and 10% had negative attitudes. In urban areas, the majority 96.7% hada positive attitude and 3.3% hada negative attitude. The knowledge mean score was 17.76 in rural women and 19.1 in urban women. The mean attitude score was 47.2 and 50.2 respectively in rural and urban women regarding MCH services, which elicited that there was no significant difference in knowledge and attitudes of urban and rural women regarding MCH services.