A Study to Assess the Effectiveness of the Structured Teaching Programme on the Level of Knowledge Regarding Prevention and Management of Childhood Obesity Among School Children in the Selected Schools at Trivandrum District, in Kerala

Abstract

Childhood obesity is a huge problem all over the world. It is a condition in which a child is significantly overweight for his or her age and height. Prevention and management of childhood obesity are necessary to avoid this crisis. For this, effective knowledge about childhood obesity is needed. This study was taken up to assess the effectiveness of the structured teaching programme on the level of knowledge regarding prevention and management of childhood obesity among school children in selected schools at Trivandrum district, in Kerala. In this study, a quantitative research approach and pre-experimental one-group pretest– post–test research design were used. The data was collected from 50 samples of Darsana Higher Secondary School, Nedumangadu using a probability (simple random) sampling technique. The study findings showed that the knowledge level of school children has increased after the administration of a structured teaching programme. The data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. This study reveals that in the pretest; there are no students with the poor and excellent level of knowledge, 52% of children had an average level of knowledge and 48% of children had a good level of knowledge. After the administration of the structured teaching programme, post-test results show that; no one had poor knowledge, only 2% have average knowledge, 40% have a good level of knowledge and 58% gained an excellent level of knowledge regarding the prevention and management of childhood obesity. “In the inferential statistics, there are associations found between the knowledge level of school children regarding the prevention and management of childhood obesity such as gender (X2 =11.68), educational status of the father (X2 =19.32), educational status of mother (X2 =18.97), occupation of mother (X2 = 19.93), previous knowledge (X2 =28.42) and there is no association between knowledge level of school children regarding prevention and management of childhood obesity with the demographic variables such as age (X2 = 0), residential area (X2 =4.93), occupation of father (X2 = 3.09), family income (X2 = 4.87) and type of family (X2 = 10.46).” Hence null hypothesis (H0) is rejected and the true hypothesis is accepted. There is an increase in an excellent level of knowledge after the administration of the structured teaching programme.