Role of Information Sources in Immunization Awareness: A Study of Kanpur District, Uttar Pradesh, India

Abstract

Background: Immunization is one of the cost-effective public health interventions. Awareness and knowledge about immunization/vaccination of the mother (during pregnancy) and the child’s immunization are important to protect against various harmful diseases. Objectives: (1) To find out the socio-economic characteristics of selected respondents. (2) To determine the association between the socio-economic characteristics and sources of information used by respondents regarding immunization. Material and Methods: The study was conducted in the Kanpur district of Uttar Pradesh state. An exploratory research design and using multistage random sampling, six slums were selected. From each selected slum area, a list of mothers who had children below the age of 5 years was prepared, and from this list, 25 mothers were selected randomly from each slum area, making a total of 150 respondents. The scoring pattern was used. Data was collected using as tructured interview schedule., Percentage, correlation coefficient, and regression line were used for the analysis of data.  Results and Discussion: Overall data shows that the availability of mass media to the respondents, 95.34 per cent of the women respondents had television. Out of all the respondents, 14.66 per cent and 3.34 per cent of respondents had newspapers and books/magazines, respectively. All the sources of information major role was played by personal localities, that is, in the case of 96.68 per cent, whereas radio, television and print media played very little role regarding immunization. Study reveals that out of all personal localities, 97.34 per cent of respondents received information through local leaders regarding the immunization camp. The high degree of positive correlation is significant through as per age, religion, education, and the number of children of the respondent has significantly exhibited are sponse towards more information regarding immunization. Findings reveal that there is a moderate negative relationship between occupation and the outcome variable, but the explanatory power (R²) is limited. Conclusion: More stress should be given to spread awareness and knowledge regarding immunization through sustained IEC (Information, Education and Communication) Campaign, media and service-providers, as knowledge was found to be related to practices.