Assessment of Mothers’ Knowledge and Anxiety Levels About Developmenta At Infancy

Objective: The study has been conducted to examine anxiety and knowledge levels of mothers whose infants aged 0-24 months regarding development at infancy according to some variables. Material and Methods: The study was conducted with 102 mothers whose infants aged 0-24 months and their gestational week was at least 37, who were consulted at a Hospital’s Child Health Surveillance Clinic and agreed to participate in the research. Mothers completed the “Family Information Form”, “The Caregiver Knowledge of Child Development Inventory (CKCDI)”, “Trait Anxiety Scale” which is part of “State and Trait Anxiety Scale”. In order to analyze variables, “Shapiro-Wilk”, “ANOVA”, “t-test” and “Tukey’s test” were used. Results: Of 63.7% mothers stated that they do not have enough knowledge about their children’s development and 62.7% of all mothers also mentioned that they read written materials such as book/magazine/booklet about child development. It is found that mothers who read written materials have more knowledge about child development in comparison with mothers who do not read. Also, mothers who have more knowledge about child development had lower anxiety level. Conclusion: According to the findings obtained from the study, it is necessary to plan studies to enhace mothers’ knowledge level about child development prepare training programs and to disseminate these programs, and to increase the number of specialists who work with parent