Development of a Mobile Application-Based Food Parenting Guide Educational Media to Improve Mothers' Knowledge of Balanced Nutrition for Toddlers

Maternal nutrition literacy is a crucial determinant of toddler nutritional status. The majority of current health applications focus on calorie intake and do not accommodate the essential aspect of food parenting, which is crucial in shaping healthy eating behaviors in children. This study aims to develop an Android educational app called "Food Parenting Guide" and to evaluate its effectiveness in improving mothers' knowledge of balanced nutrition for toddlers. This quasi-experimental study with a one-group pretest-posttest design involved 96 mothers of toddlers in Bengkulu City, selected through purposive sampling. The application was developed using the ADDIE model. Effectiveness was analyzed using the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test, and the correlation among respondent characteristics was tested using the Chi-Square and Spearman's Rank tests. The results showed a significant increase in the average knowledge score from 54.27±12.84 to 78.42±9.16 (p