A pilot study exploring parents’/guardians’/caregivers’ attitudes toward school health education and perceptions of school health education program quality in low SES schools
Presentation
Overview
Overview
Description
Quality school health education (QSHE) is an essential component of the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child approach that promotes students’ physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development. QSHE aims to increase students’ functional health knowledge, shape beliefs and values that promote healthy behaviors, and help students develop essential skills necessary to adopt and maintain health-enhancing behavior (CDC, 2017). Parents/guardians/caregivers are ideal community partners to advocate for quality school health education at the local level. However, as a pre-requisite step, it is necessary to understand parents’/guardians’/caregivers’ attitudes toward school health education, perceptions of the importance of school health education content areas, and perceptions of the overall quality of local school health education programs. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine parents’/guardians’/caregivers’ attitudes toward school health education, perceptions of the importance of school health education content areas, and perceptions of local school health education program quality. Procedures: A non-experimental cross-sectional design was utilized for this study. The study was delimited to parents/guardians/caregivers with at least one school-age child enrolled in a K-12 school within an underserved, urban geographic area in the Southeastern region of North Carolina. The instrument developed for this study was reviewed by four expert panel members for readability as well as face validity and content validity. It was also reviewed by members of the priority population for readability and clarity. Potential participants were mailed a hard copy of the survey with a self-addressed stamped envelope between May and July 2016. Attitudes toward school health education and perceptions of the quality of local school health education programs were measured with five, 5-point Likert scales ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Perceptions of the importance of school health education content areas was measured with 13, 5-point Likert-type items ranging from not at all important to very important. Participants who completed the survey were entered into a raffle for a gift card. Descriptive statistics were calculated including frequencies and percentages.
Findings: The final pilot sample consisted of 32 parents/guardians/caregivers of at least one school-age child enrolled in a school within the geographic area under study. The majority of the sample was female (90.3%), non-Hispanic (79.3%), and African-American/Black (63.3%). Approximately 71% of the sample had one (35.5%) or two (35.5%) children under the age of 18 living in their household. Participants’ ages ranged from 23-71 years. Approximately 69% of the sample had graduated from high school or completed between 1-3 years of college. Over half (51.8%) of the sample reported earning $20,000 or less before taxes in the past 12 months. The majority (93.8%) of the sample agreed (21.9%) or strongly agreed (71.9%) that school health education is very important for their child. Nearly three quarters (71.9%) of the sample agreed or strongly agreed that the quality of SHE at their child’s school was good though nearly one quarter (21.9%) of the sample was neutral. Additionally, over three quarters of the sample agreed or strongly agreed that SHE at their child’s school was “necessary” (90.6%), “useful” (90%), and “beneficial” (81.3%). Over three quarters of the sample indicated that the following SHE content areas were important or very important: alcohol or drug use prevention (90.7%), asthma (86.2%), emotional and mental health (90.7%), HIV prevention (89.7%), human sexuality (82.1%), infectious disease prevention (96.4%), injury prevention and safety (93.1%), nutrition and dietary behavior (92.8%), physical activity and fitness (100%), STD prevention (96.6%), suicide prevention (93.3%), tobacco use prevention (87.5%), and violence prevention (90.6%).
Conclusions: The findings from this study suggest that parents/guardians/caregivers value SHE for their children and believe that a diverse array of SHE content areas are important within the curriculum. Further, parents/guardians/caregivers have positive perceptions of the quality of school health education that their children receive, overall, though there is some room for improvement. The results of this study may be used to better understand strengths and limitations of local SHE programs and to assist in the development/selection of strategies to promote community-driven advocacy for quality SHE programs. School health professionals may use a similar approach to gauge parents’/guardians’/caregivers’ attitudes toward SHE and perceptions of local SHE programs. Qualitative research is needed to further elicit parents’/guardians’/caregivers’ attitudes toward SHE and perceptions of local SHE program quality
