Hygiene in the home: relating bugs and behaviour.

Much infectious intestinal disease (IID) arises in the home environment. If programmes to prevent infection are to be effective it is essential to both identify the particular practices that risk disease transmission, and to understand the reasons for these practices. An in-depth, multidisciplinary study of carer and child hygiene in the domestic environment in the Wirral, UK, employed structured observation, surface swabbing for polio vaccine virus and enteric marker organisms, semi-structured interviews, projective interviews and focus group discussions.