Abstract:
The purposes of this research are: 1) to study pre-school childrens nutritional status in Klongtoey slum, 2) to study social and cultural factors affecting the nutritional status, and 3) to analyse the correlation between affectional factors and childrens nutritional status. A sample of 75 households were selected from household in the Klongtoey slum, It was found that 28.0 percent of pre-school children were first stage malnutritional affection, 5.3 percent were in second stage malnutritional affection, and finally, 4.0 percent in third stage malnutritional affection. The testing of correlation of variables confirmed the hypothesis, i.e. social and cultural and economic factors, children physical conditions and food technology had direct and significant correlation with childrens nutritional status. Those not having correlation were physical household surroundings. Cause of malnutritional or the affectional factors of the pre-school malnutritional children, from the analysis of both quantitative and qualitative data, can be classified into two groups arranged into statistical order as follows: 1) factors concerning household economy 2) factors concerning social and cultural conditions. - carefulness on children and their food, - mothers nutritional knowledge. The study of numbers of variables had shown that factors concerning social and cultural conditions of the households had important affect on pre-school children malnutritional status, i.e. nine variables had shown significant correlations. Only 4 variables on economic conditions of the household had significant correlation with the nutritional status of pre-school children. The analysis of 4 case studies further explained factors of household economy and mothers nutritional knowledge in the sense that they had influence to the carefulness of mother upon her child and child health directed food. It was also found that within the community, children and health food had not been given much interest and care. These had been often neglected and not treated as crucial for the whole families.