Mother’s beliefs related to the use of pediatric services in urban areas of Mexico

Abstract

One of the problems of the pediatric services continues to be the compliance with preventive recommendations by the childrens' mothers. There is little research on mothers” beliefs about non-compliance with preventive measures. This could be due to the lack of valid and reliable instruments to measure mothers” beliefs. In order to determine construct validity and internal consistency of a mother belief instrument, a study with 475 mothers of children under two years old was carried out. A mothers” health beliefs measure was developed with 48 items following the Health Belief Model constructs (perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, medical care perceived benefits, perceived limits and health motivation). Construct validity was assesed using a principal components factorial analysis with varimax rotation. Eight dimensions were obtained with a high degree of internal consistency, related to susceptibility, benefits, perceived severity, health motivation and perceived limits. It was found that the first three dimensions determine two subscales: one for diseases avoidable with vaccination and the other for diseases avoidable with sanitary care. Perceived susceptibility and perceived severity levels have a low average which would indicate that that mothers tend to believe their children are not very vulnerable and that illness would not seriously affect them. This could explain the delay in the use of health services and the lack of complete vaccinations in children under two.