Australian National Infant Feeding Survey
The 2010 Australian National Infant Feeding Survey, conducted in 2010-11 by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, is the first specialised large-scale national survey of infant feeding practices, related attitudes, and behaviours conducted in Australia. It provides cross-sectional data to produce reliable estimates of infant feeding practices in Australia.
The main aim of the survey was to provide baseline data on estimates of the prevalence and duration of breastfeeding and other feeding practices adopted by mothers/carers. Barriers to initiating, continuing breastfeeding, and baseline data on perinatal depression were also explored in the survey. The infant feeding practices published by the World Health Organisation in 2008; exclusive breastfeeding, predominant breastfeeding, complementary or partial breastfeeding, any breastfeeding, and ever breastfed were adopted in this study. Breastmilk in this survey includes colostrum, expressed breastmilk, and breastmilk from a donor or donor milk bank.
The survey was separated into five parts:
- Part 1 – Today’s Date obtained information on date of completion of survey.
- Part 2 – General Information About Your Child obtained information about date of birth, birth weight and length, country of birth, and birth characteristics.
- Part 3 – Feeding Your Child obtained information about breastfeeding intention, first feed, ever breastfed or ever had other fluids or foods, consumption of breastmilk, other fluids or foods, and reasons given for decisions.
- Part 4 – About Yourself obtained information regarding the respondent of the survey including demographics and parental leave. and
- Part 5 – Mothers Only obtained information regarding employment during pregnancy, tobacco consumption during pregnancy, number of previous children and depression.
The data is available through the ADA’s Dataverse Dataset.