EFFECT OF NUTRITION EDUCATION ON NUTRITIONAL KNOWLEDGE OF RURAL PREGNANT WOMEN IN ENUGU STATE

The study investigated the effect of nutrition education on nutrition knowledge of rural pregnant women in Enugu State. Ten research questions guided the study and ten null hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance. Quasi-experimental research design was adopted for this study. The population of the study comprised all the 17,164 registered pregnant women in the eight public antenatal clinic centres in Enugu East Local Government Area of Enugu State. The sample for the study comprised 851 registered pregnant women drawn using multistage sampling procedure. The instrument for data collection was ‘‘Nutritional Knowledge Test (NKT). The instruments were subjected to face and content validity by three experts, two from the Department of Human Promotion and Public Health Education and one from the Department of Educational Foundations, NnamdiAzikiwe University. The reliability of the instrument was established using Kudder-Richard 20 statistics which yielded coefficient of 0.94. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions and the hypotheses were tested using the Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA). The findings of the study revealed among others that the nutritional knowledge mean scores of rural pregnant women of different levels of education and occupation in the experimental were greater than that of the control groups after nutrition education intervention. It was also found that there was significant difference in the nutritional knowledge mean scores of rural pregnant women of both experimental and control groups after nutrition education intervention. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that health personnel should organize regular interactive sessions for nutrition education intervention to pregnant women during antenatal period in clinic or any health-care facility