Skip to main content

Table 2 Participant characteristics overall and by HIV status among 1693c women with early postnatal interviews

From: Infant feeding knowledge and practice vary by maternal HIV status: a nested cohort study in rural South Africa

Characteristic Overall Women not living with HIV Women living with HIV p-value*
Number 1680 895 785  
Age, years (IQR) 25 (21–30) 23 (20–27) 28 (23–32) <  0.001
Education, n (%)a 0.003
 Less than high school 730 (43.6) 355 (39.9) 375 (47.8)  
 High school or above 945 (56.1) 539 (60.0) 406 (51.7)  
 Missing 5 (0.3) 1 (0.1) 4 (0.5)  
Employment, n (%)a 0.001
 Employed/ other 221 (13.1) 88 (9.8) 133 (16.9)  
 Unemployed 1453 (86.5) 803 (89.8) 650 (82.9)  
 Missing 6 (0.4) 4 (0.4) 2 (0.3)  
Household assets‡, n (%)a 0.003
  ≥ 15 assets 551 (32.9) 321 (36.1) 230 (29.3)  
  < 15 assets 1129 (67.1) 574 (63.9) 555 (70.7)  
Household income, n (%) <  0.001
 Family income ≥ R2000 714 (42.5) 380 (42.5) 334 (42.5)  
 Family income < R2000 620 (36.9) 292 (32.5) 328 (41.8)  
 Missing 346 (20.6) 223 (25.0) 123 (15.7)  
Relationship status, n (%)a 0.559
 Married/ living with partner/ other 278 (16.6) 136 (15.2) 142 (18.2)  
 Not married and not living with partner 1397 (83.2) 757 (84.6) 640 (81.6)  
 Missing 5 (0.2) 2 (0.2) 3 (0.3)  
Number of children, n (%)a <  0.001
 More than 1 child 1061 (63.1) 444 (49.5) 617 (78.6)  
 One child 615 (36.6) 449 (50.3) 166 (21.1)  
 Missing 4 (0.2) 2 (0.2) 2 (0.3)  
Drinking water sourceb, n (%)a 0.325
 Piped water in or on property 617 (36.7) 327 (36.7) 290 (36.8)  
 Communal water pipe, bore hole, tank 883 (52.5) 463 (51.6) 420 (53.6)  
 Other (stream/ dam/ purchase) 180 (10.7) 105 (11.7) 75 (9.6)  
Time travelled to clinic during pregnancyb, n (%)a 0.006
  < 15 min 209 (12.4) 127 (14.1) 82 (10.5)  
 15–30 min 750 (44.6) 388 (43.4) 362 (46.0)  
 31–60 min 479 (28.5) 256 (28.6) 223 (28.5)  
  > 60 min 222 (13.2) 111 (12.5) 111 (14.1)  
 Missing 20 (1.2) 13 (1.5) 7 (0.9)  
Exposure to CQI during pregnancy, n (%)a 0.002
 Unexposed 975 (58.3) 536 (60.3) 439 (56.1)  
 Exposed 705 (41.7) 359 (39.7) 346 (43.9)  
  1. CQI continuous quality improvement, IQR interquartile range
  2. *Pearson’s Chi square test for difference between women living with HIV vs women not living with HIV
  3. aAll proportions are adjusted for clustering by first attended antenatal clinic
  4. bDrinking water source and time travelled to clinic were excluded from final adjusted regression models by a backwards stepwise regression process to achieve model parsimony. A significance level of 0.05 was used during the process of comparing model fit
  5. cHIV status missing in n = 13 early postnatal interviews
  6. ‡ Household assets were a checklist of household items (types of furniture, appliances, livestock etc) as indicators of household wealth in the AHRI population surveillance area. For the present analysis, ‘wealthy’ households were classified as those having at least 15 assets and poor households were those with < 15 assets. Household assets were included in adjusted models as a proxy for household income given the degree of missingness in the income variable
Back to article page

International Breastfeeding Journal

ISSN: 1746-4358