Information-Seeking Behaviour of Women Regarding Household Health and Hygiene Practices

Background: Inadequate health and hygiene practices have direct effect on health of the individual, family, communities and nation as a whole. The knowledge about different health and hygiene practices depends largely upon the sources from where we regularly get information. Women tend to be the primary health information seekers for family and for themselves. Therefore there is a need to study their information seeking behaviours.

Aim: The present study was conducted with the objectives to identify the information-seeking behaviour of women regarding household health and hygiene practices, and to ascertain the relationship of information-seeking behaviour of women with their household and socio-economic characteristics.

Methodology: 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, a total of 200 women formed the sample for the study and data was collected with the help of an interview schedule.

Results: Information-seeking behaviour was studied in terms of information needs, use of information source and information source evaluation. Findings of the study revealed that majority of the respondents i.e. 59 per cent had low information needs for selected household health and hygiene practices. Informal sources were the most frequently used sources of information whereas use of all information sources by most of the respondents (98%) was found to be low. Around 40 per cent of the respondents never evaluate the source of information while looking for information on household health and hygiene practices. Half of the respondents (50%) had active information-seeking behaviour regarding household health and hygiene practices.

Conclusion: Information-seeking behaviour of the respondents was positively correlated with their education, occupation and mass media exposure while age of the respondents and the family type were negatively correlated with their information-seeking behaviour.