Designing a mobile application for educating mothers of preschool children with undernutrition and comparing its efficacy with the usual method of clinical education on the level of knowledge, attitude and nutritional practices of mothers and nutritional status of children aged 2 to 6 years

Design, implementation and evaluation of the effect of educational undernutrition management application in preschool children

Clinical trial with control group, with parallel group design of 100 patients, non-blind, randomized groups. Simple randomization will be carry out, groups will be matched based on age, sex and degree of malnutrition, as well as supplement or drug use.

To conduct the study, an application with contents of child growth charts, healthy nutrition education and the necessary instructions to improve the nutritional status of children will be designed and will be provided to the intervention group. The level of knowledge, attitude and practice of mothers of children with malnutrition will be assessed using a questionnaire. Anthropometric and weights for age, weight for height and BMI for age z-scores will be used to measure the effectiveness of education for mothers on the improvement of child malnutrition at the beginning and end of the study.This study will be conducted in Iran, Tabriz.

Smartphone accessibility, being 2 to 6 years old, being malnourished and underweight

In this study, individuals will be divided into two intervention groups, including virtual training by the application and the group receiving the usual method of clinical training. The educational materials provided to both groups will be the same. After 3 months of using the application or providing face-to-face training anthropometric indices, weight for age and weight for height z-scores (at the beginning and end of the study) will be used to measure the effectiveness of education to mothers of children with malnutrition on the improvement of children malnutrition.

Weight; Height; weight for age, weight for height and BMI for age z-scores; Knowledge, attitude and practice of mothers

Individuals enter the study through convenience sampling from pediatrician's office and will be divided into two groups of intervention and control using simple randomization and will be matched based on age, sex and degree of malnutrition as well as supplementation or medication. In this study, we will use block randomization. Blocking is usually used to balance the number of samples assigned to each of the study groups. This feature helps researchers to equate the number of samples assigned to each of the study groups in cases where intermediate analyzes are required during the sampling process. The size of all the blocks is the same and we will have 4 blocks in this four-group experiment. The randomization tool is also used from the site www.sealedenvelope.com, which is a site for generating random sequences, in addition to simple randomization, is able to generate random sequences by blocking method. For concealment, we use allocation concealment, which is the method used to execute a random sequence on study participants, so that the assigned group is not known before the individual is assigned. Using opaque envelopes sealed with a random sequence (Sequentially numbered, sealed, opaque envelopes) in which in this method each random sequence is recorded on a card and the cards are placed in the envelopes respectively. Are placed. In order to maintain a random sequence, the envelopes are numbered in the same way on the outer surface. Finally, the lids of the letter envelopes are glued and placed inside a box, respectively. At the beginning of the registration of participants, based on the order of entry of eligible participants into the study, one of the envelopes of the letter is opened in order and the assigned group of the participant is revealed.

In this study, participants will be unaware of the type of intervention received (application or routine consultation) by each group.