Our question

The Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) Knowledge and Attitudes project has been an ongoing effort to explore the culture around infant feeding among the general public in Nova Scotia. In Phase I of this project (2018), we wanted to answer two questions:

  • What do Nova Scotians know about infant feeding? and

  • How confident are they in their knowledge?

We surveyed adults across the province about infant feeding, and then asked participants to self-rate their confidence. We then compared participant responses to government recommendations to see if there were any differences.

Results

A diverse group of 229 adults complete the survey: 60% were women, 73% identified as white, 69% were parents, and participant age ranged from 19 to 95 years. While participants answered some questions correctly, for example 86% correctly answered that breastmilk was the best food for a new infant, we also found several knowledge gaps. In fact, over 50% of participants incorrectly answered 6 out of the 10 questions we analyzed. We also found that infant feeding knowledge varied with certain characteristics. Men, non-parents, older adults, and participants with lower household incomes tended to answer incorrectly more often.

Despite these knowledge gaps, we found that participants were generally quite confident in their infant feeding knowledge. On average, participants’ self-rated confidence was 7.2 out of 10, and for three questions, we found that participants that answered incorrectly were just as confident in their knowledge as participants that answered correctly.

This study shows that there may be low awareness of infant feeding recommendations in Nova Scotia, and this could potentially result in sharing incorrect information. High confidence in incorrect beliefs may also affect adherence to the recommendations.

How to find out more

If you would like to learn more, you can read our peer-reviewed article “High confidence, yet poor knowledge of infant feeding recommendations among adults in Nova Scotia, Canada”. We also reviewed other research on infant feeding knowledge and attitudes in our article “Exploring breastfeeding knowledge and attitudes among non-caregivers: A narrative review”.

You can also see our coverage from The Chronicle Herald, or check out a summary of our research in this short video.

Next steps

We are currently working on analyzing more data from Phase I, exploring attitudes towards breastfeeding images. Stay tuned for more information!

Phase II of this research is also well underway. MAMA Lab master’s student Olga Levin will be taking a closer look at infant feeding knowledge gaps among young men, non-parent in Nova Scotia. More information about her work can be found here.