Korean J Child Health Nurs.  2004 Jan;10(1):66-79.

A Study on Health Education Program Development of Respiratory Communicable Disease Prevention for Preschool Children and the Measurement of It's Effects

• Kim IO

Abstract

PURPOSE
The purpose of this study were to develop a respiratory communicable disease prevention program for preschoolers and measure it's effects. METHOD: The respiratory communicable disease prevention program for preschoolers consisted of texts, cartoons, photographs, discussions, demonstrations, puzzle games, die games, compensation/reinforcement, and token economy which were directed under the systematic design of instruction by Dick & Carey. This study was a quasi experimental study under the nonequivalent control group with pretest-posttest design. The subjects of this study were 45 preschool children who are attending 3 different district nursery schools and they were matched by the age, pretest knowledge, and pretest behavior. The instrument used in this study was criterion referenced test items that were developed by a researcher for evaluating the subject's knowledge, attitude, and behavior about respiratory communicable disease prevention. A pretest was administered a week before treatment. Experimental group I was administered by the treatment of respiratory communicable disease prevention program. Experimental group II was administered by above program with token economy program. The posttest was conducted on the eighth day. The third test for behavior was completed 15th day. To determine the effect of the program, the data were analyzed by the SAS 6.12 program with Kruskal Wallis test, ANCOVA, ANOVA, Duncan's test and paired t-test. RESULT: 1) There was a significant difference in knowledge between the experimental groups and control group(F=5.89, P=0.0197). 2) There was a significant difference in attitude between the experimental groups and control group(F=3.29, P=0.0469). 3) There was a non-significant difference in behavior between the experimental groups and control group(F=0.00, P=0.9512). 4) In the experimental group II, there was highly significant increase in behavior after token economy(t=4.5252, P=0.0005).
CONCLUSION
It was found that the respiratory communicable disease prevention program for preschool children was effective in changing the preschoolers' knowledge and attitude on the respiratory communicable disease prevention, but not enough for changing the preschoolers' behavior. Token economy was improved as an effective and strong method for inducing desirable changes of preschoolers' behavior.

MeSH Terms

Child, Preschool*
Communicable Diseases*
Health Education*
Humans
Program Development*
Schools, Nursery
Token Economy
Child Health