영유아 부모의 육아정보 이용실태 및 활용지원 방안

Abstract

As the government has increased its accountability on child care sphere, there has accordingly been an increase in the provision of public child caring information for parents with infants and young children. However, very few researches considered how parents access to the information and whether the information is actually suitable to the specific needs of parents. In this vein, this research is to present measures to offer selected and user-oriented information to parents by grouping information in compliance with user characteristics and preference. An investigation was carried out to identify the current status of the provision of public child caring information by reviewing the literature and a survey was conducted to 1508 parents to understand their awareness on the use of information and their needs. Also interviews were conducted to 22 parents who highly make use of the information. To draw expert opinions in planning and operating public information projects, 7 working level meetings and 7 consultative meetings were carried out with government officials, practitioners, and scholars. The finding revealed that parents are in need of information about public services (27.7%), child development (25.8%), and early childhood education (17.3%) and their needs vary depending on the developmental stages where their children are. Parents access to the information with the help of personal media (59.0%), acquaintances (20.0%), and institutions (16.4%). What they consider important in choosing the media is the convenience in using (39.0%), reliability and quality (22.4%), and variety in types of information (20.2%). As to public child caring information, although over the 80% of parents are using medical services and child care and education services, below the 20% access to the information in categories of inspection/treatment, counselling, and performance/entertainment. Parents mainly obtain information through community based institutions; that is local government offices, community centers or health centers/clinics/hospitals with its own comprehensive use. In this research, recommendations were made in order to increase the public information availability: first, the information needs to be selected and categorized in accordance with the age of their children; second, for convenience in the usage management, public child caring information is recommended to be offered through personal channels. Especially, connection among public portals, simplification of menu and searching engines, and trimming the contents are needed; third, community-based hub organizations can efficiently deliver the information to parents so as to support child caring which reflects local needs and resources.