Effectiveness of an Educational School-Based Intervention on Knowledge of Unintentional Injury Prevention and First Aid Among Students in Ujjain, India

Abstract

To determine the effectiveness of an educational intervention on the knowledge of adolescents on prevention of unintentional injuries and first aid. The study used one group pre-post intervention design, without external controls. A two-stage (at schools and classes) cluster sampling was used to enroll 1944 high school students in Ujjain district. The intervention consisted of educational intervention using lectures presented through Power Point presentations, pictures, and videos. Sixty sessions each wherein a questionnaire to assess knowledge of participants was administered before and after the educational intervention. The outcome was a change in knowledge score. The study included 1944 school students [1105 (57%) boys] with mean (SD) age of 15.9 (1.3) years. The analysis of variance revealed the difference between the sum total of pre- and post-intervention scores was statistically significant (P <0.001), with a large effect size of 3.7. Younger students outperformed older students, boys outperformed girls, students of urban schools outperformed their rural counterparts, students of public schools outperformed those of private schools and students of Hindi medium schools outperformed students of English medium schools. This school-based educational intervention significantly increased the knowledge of students on the prevention of unintentional injuries and first aid.