Ling, Chua Yi
(2014)
Knowledge, attitude and practice of
antenatal exercise among pregnant
women in Hospital Universiti Sains
Malaysia.
Project Report.
Universiti Sains Malaysia.
(Submitted)
Abstract
Exercise has been demonstrated to be beneficial for the mother and the
unborn child, and programs of antenatal exercise for pregnant women have been
recommended. There are few references on this subject in the literature. The aim of this
study was to investigate the knowledge, attitude and practice of antenatal exercise
among pregnant women in Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia (Hospital USM). A cross-sectional, descriptive study was conducted in 128 pregnant women
of 18 to 45 years of age receiving antenatal care at Hospital Universiti Sains Malaysia
were surveyed using a structured self-administered questionnaire. The simple random
sampling technique was used to select the sample for the study. Statistical analysis was
conducted using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.
Descriptive statistics were used to summarize socio-demographic and characteristics of
the pregnant women. The Pearson’s chi-Square test was used to evaluate the association
between the study variables: socio-demographic data (age, education level, number of
pregnancy and income) with the knowledge, attitude, and practice of antenatal execise
of pregnant women. A p-value of equal or less than 0.05 was considered significant. There was 56.3% (72) of study population had inadequate knowledge of
antenatal exercise and 65.6% (84) participants had adequate attitude. Then, there was
53.9% (69) of participants had adequate practice while the remaining 46.1% (59)
participants had inadequate practice. Educational level was found to be associated with
the knowledge level of participants, with p-value 0.020. The two main sources of
information regarding antenatal exercise are magazines (60.6%) and doctors (58.7%).
There was 92.7% (114) participants claimed that antenatal exercise is necessary and
important because it makes childbirth easier. Lack of information regarding antenatal
exercise was the principal reason given by 29 (56.9%) participants for not exercising
during pregnancy.
This study reflected that there was a lack of knowledge in most of the
pregnant women population. In comparison with the knowledge, attitude of pregnant women was higher regarding antenatal exercise. Besides that, These results suggest that
the pregnant women’s knowledge concerning the antenatal exercise during pregnancy
was inadequate and their attitude was favorable; there was nearly half of pregnant
women not practiced antenatal exercises during pregnancy. Therefore, awareness
regarding the benefit of antenatal exercise and related programme on exercise would be
useful for pregnant women to practice antenatal exercise.
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