Background: Appropriate infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices in the early years of life will ensure optimal growth and development of the child. However, many children are not fed in the recommended way.
Objectives: To assess the risk of malnutrition as a result of various feeding practice patterns among the children with the application of the decision tree algorithm.
Methods: It was a community-based cross-sectional study conducted in the urban slums of Berhampur Municipal Corporation in Ganjam District, Odisha, India, from January to December 2019. Among a sample of 360 children of 6-23 months, nutritional status and feeding practices were determined. Data were analyzed using R version 3.6.1 developed by R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. The effect of IYCF practices on nutritional status was explained with the decision tree method with the use of a Chi-squared automatic interaction detection algorithm.