The assessment of knowledge, attitude and propensity of pregnant women regarding homebirth, Babol, 2003

Abstract

Background and Objective: Homebirth leads to reducing medical interventions, inducing parent-neonate attachment and breast-feeding encouragement. This study was performed to assess the knowledge, attitude and propensity of pregnant women regarding homebirth. Methods: In this study, 5 therapeutic and health centers were selected. Sampling was randomly done on 220 pregnant women by questionnaire. Findings: In this study, most pregnant women (58%) had average knowledge toward homebirth. There was a statistically significant relationship between knowledge with educational level but did not show a significant relationship with other individual characteristics. 76% had neutral attitude and only 4% had positive attitude to homebirth and also most of them did not show any attitude to homebirth (79.1%). Attitude and propensity had not relationship with any individual characteristics of subjects. However, there was a statistically significant relationship between knowledge with attitude and propensity and between attitude and propensity. Conclusion: According to the results, improvement of knowledge and more correction of attitude to homebirth should be planned by educational programs and inducing motivation to increase knowledge that will be due to improvement in practice.

Keywords

• knowledge
• attitude
• propensity