Information-seeking behaviour of women regarding health and hygiene practices
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Date
2017
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Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana
Abstract
The present study was undertaken with the objectives to identify the information-seeking behaviour of women regarding health and hygiene practices, to determine the problems in information-seeking and to ascertain the association of information-seeking behaviour of women with their personal and socio-economic characteristics. The study was conducted in Ludhiana district of Punjab. Two blocks and two zones were selected purposively from Ludhiana district. Further two villages from each block and two localities from each zone were selected randomly. Twenty five women from each selected village as well as from each locality in the age of 25-50 years were selected on random basis. Thus total 200 women formed the sample for the study. Health and hygiene practices were studied under three categories as personal, food related and household health and hygiene practices. Findings of the study revealed that majority of the respondents had low information needs for selected health and hygiene practices. Use of all information sources by most of the respondents was found to be low for seeking information on all health and hygiene practices while informal sources were the most frequently used sources of information. Information sources were never evaluated by the majority of the respondents while looking for information on household and food related health and hygiene practices, and were sometimes evaluated by them in case of personal and overall health and hygiene practices. Equal proportion of the respondents had active and passive information-seeking behaviour regarding personal health and hygiene practices, and active information-seeking behaviour for household and overall health and hygiene practices. In case of food related health and hygiene practices, majority of the respondents possessed passive information-seeking behaviour. Major problems faced by the respondents related to informal, formal, print and electronic sources were unreliability, expensiveness, non-availability and lack of knowledge in using source. Information-seeking behaviour of the respondents was significantly associated with their education, family income and mass media exposure.
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