OBJECTIVE: Mothers are the first subject to recognize children's health problems, so that good maternal perceptions, one of which is related to child nutrition problems, enable early identification and appropriate management. This study intends to assess how accurate are the mothers' perceptions toward malnutrition in children.
METHOD: This study is a cross-sectional analytic study involving as many as 50 mothers who have children aged 0 to 2 years in the working area of Public Health Center IV of South Denpasar.
RESULT: The average maternal age is 28.27 years, 46% are high school graduates, and 54% do not work. The average age of children is 8.64 months, as many as 60% are men. The prevalence of children with undernutrition, overnutrition and stunting are 12%, 4% and 0% respectively. Maternal perception toward undernutrition has the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV) of 33.33%, 95.45%, 50% and 91.3%, respectively. Maternal perception toward overnutrition has the sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV of 50%, 70.83%, 6.67% and 97.14% respectively. While the perceptions of mothers related to stunting have specificity, PPV and NPV each at 88%, 0% and 100%.
CONCLUSION: Accuracy of maternal perceptions in confirming that children do not experience undernutrition, overnutrition, or stunting according to the results and in reality each is 95.45%, 70.83% and 88%. Inadequate maternal perceptions in identifying the incidence of malnutrition is still quite common, causing the importance of active participation from health care providers in personal and professional situations, in identifying and dealing with malnutrition in children.