Abstract
Background
School age is a time when students form habits of healthy behavior that affect their lifetime health. However, most previous studies were conducted on hand washing and brushing teeth and no studies included bathing in personal hygiene. We aim to improve knowledge and performance about hand washing, brushing teeth, and bathing in school age children. The study was based on the health belief model and ways to establish proper personal hygiene habits.
Methods
A non-equivalent control group, pretest-posttest design was used in this study. The educational content included hand hygiene, oral hygiene and bath hygiene. After the pre and post evaluation of the control group, the experimental group received the education and pre and post evaluation over five weeks. Then, the education program was provided to the control group. This study was conducted over ten weeks from April to June 2017.
Results
Knowledge on personal hygiene habits (F=8.41, P=0.006) and performance of personal hygiene habits (F=29.09, P<0.001) were higher in the experimental group compared to the control group after controlling the covariates.
Conclusions
The results of this study show obvious difference between the experimental group and control group on knowledge and performance for personal hygiene habits. This result demonstrated that the program based on the health belief model was effective. It is necessary to develop other effective programs including hand washing, brushing teeth, and bathing to help students develop good personal hygiene habits.
Figures and Tables
Table 4
Abbreviations: MD, mean difference; SE, standard error.
Values are presented as mean±standard deviation unless otherwise indicated.
aCalculated by paired t-test.
bCalculated by analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) with gender as a covariate.
cCalculated by ANCOVA with gender and pre-score of performance for personal hygiene habit as covariates.
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