Abstract:
The purposes of this research were to 1) examine the relationships between selected factors including a) proximal determinants: attitude toward exclusive breastfeeding, working hour, influence of advertising media, influence of media campaign, b) intermediate determinants: including exclusive breastfeeding knowledge, exclusive breastfeeding skill, husband's support, c) underlying determinations including intention to exclusive breastfeeding and duration of exclusive breastfeeding and 2) to determine abilities of selected factors in predicting duration of exclusive breastfeeding in teenage mothers. One hundred and thirty subjects who were mothers of 6-month old infant were selected through convenience sampling method. Data collection tools including personal data sheet, attitude toward exclusive breastfeeding scale, influence of advertising media scale, influence of media campaign scale, exclusive breastfeeding knowledge scale, exclusive breastfeeding skill scale, husband's support scale and intention to exclusive breastfeeding scale were content validated. All questionnaires were tested for reliability from which the Cronbach's alpha were between 0.73 and 0.92 Statistical techniques use were percentage, mean, standard deviation, Pearson's product moment correlation, and Hierarchical multiple regression. Main findings were as follows: 1. Selected factors including proximal determinants: influence of media campaign, intermediate determinant: husband's support, exclusive breastfeeding skill and underlying determinants: intention to exclusive breastfeeding were significantly positively correlated with duration of exclusive breastfeeding in teenage mothers (r = 0.30, 0.23, 0.22 and 0.28, respectively p<.05) Proximal determinants including attitude toward exclusive breastfeeding, working hour, influence of advertising media, and intermediate determinants including exclusive breastfeeding knowledge were not correlated with duration of exclusive breastfeeding in teenage mothers (r = 0.01, -0.06, 0.06 and 0.12, respectively p>.05) 2. For the predictive abilities, all predictive together accounted for 12 percents of the variance in predicting duration of exclusive breastfeeding in teenage mothers (R² = 0.12, F=12.16, p<.05). The results indicated that influence of media campaign was only significant predictor of the duration of exclusive breastfeeding in teenage mothers (Beta = 0.29, p<.05). The results from this study can be used as guideline for promoting duration of exclusive breastfeeding in teenage mothers.