DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF MATERNAL DIET GUIDELINE MODULE TOWARDS REDUCTION OF ALLERGIC REACTION AMONG EXCLUSIVELY BREASTFED INFANTS

Abstract

The allergy prevalent among infants is in increasing trend in Malaysia. Surprisingly, the exclusively breastfed infants also experienced an allergic reaction due to many associated factors that include maternal dietary intake. However, there was no specific guideline on the maternal diet and allergy prevention among exclusively breastfed infants. Thus, the need for a guideline for maternal diet is crucial in order to prevent and reduce the allergic reaction among exclusively breastfed infants. This study aims to develop and validate the module of maternal diet guideline for prevention of allergy through modulation of maternal diet among breastfed infants. The module was developed based on the current literature review. The content of the module was validated using the content validity index (CVI), which are the Item-level Content Validity Index (I-CVI) and scale-content validity index (S-CVI). The item-level (I-CVIs) was considered in this study due to its consistency which further calculated into modified kappa statistics. The items with an I-CVIs of 0.78 or higher was considered evidence of good content validity. The percentage of agreement is 88.72% that indicates the highest level of achievement. The validity of the module had achieved I-CVI of 0.89, which was considered as having excellent content validity with the majority of the kappa value for each item is excellent. This study shows that the module that is developed has excellent content validity that can be used for the targeted population in order to reduce the allergy prevalence among breastfed infant for better health outcome.