| Summary: | Objectives. To study infant care practices and lifestyle choices of Aboriginal mothers and a comparison group. Relevance. To help formulate preventive strategies for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in Aboriginal infants. Methods. A two part design was used. Sixteen in-depth interviews with mothers of infants were completed and analysed using qualitative methods. Recurrent patterns in infant care practices, the language used to describe infant care, and sources of infant care information were sought. These data were used to construct a standardized survey tool, and to provide additional context to the quantitative results. The second phase consisted of a cross-sectional survey; administration of the questionnaire by trained interviewers in the home, which was linked to perinatal data from the provincial postpartum database. All mothers with an infant 1-6 months old in selected northern Aboriginal (4) and non-Aboriginal (4) communities were approached to participate. An urban sample consisted of those mothers with apparent Aboriginal surnames in selected neighbourhoods and a random sample of the remainder. Data were collected from 126 self declared Aboriginal and 144 non-Aboriginal mothers. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
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