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The Effects of a Fifth Grade Health Education Curriculum Model on Perceived Vulnerability and Smoking Attitudes
Author(s) -
Stone Elaine J.
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
journal of school health
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.851
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1746-1561
pISSN - 0022-4391
DOI - 10.1111/j.1746-1561.1978.tb03781.x
Subject(s) - curriculum , vulnerability (computing) , psychology , health education , environmental health , developmental psychology , social psychology , medicine , pedagogy , public health , nursing , computer science , computer security
The major purpose of this study was to assess the effects of the School Health Curriculum Project (SHCP) on fifth grade students in two areas related to health attitudes and behavior. The areas were perceived vulnerability to illnesses and accidents and attitudes towards smoking. A secondary problem was to determine if relationships existed between variables such as sex, ethnicity, income and reading level and the post‐test results for the Treatment Group on the two measures used in this investigation. A quasi‐experimental design was used. The specific design was an adaptation of a Nonequivalent Control Group Design modified by the addition of a Post‐test‐Only Control Group. The sample population participating in the study consisted of 635 students representing 33 intact classrooms from a multicultural urban school district in New Mexico. The data collection instruments used for pre‐ and post‐testing were the Gochman Perceived Vulnerability Instrument (PV) and two subscales of the Teenage Self Test for Cigarette Smoking (ST). The statistics used to analyze the data included descriptive statistics and analysis of variance. Findings revealed that the SHCP fifth grade unit had an effect on students' reported attitudes towards smoking in the direction of the curriculum objectives. The secondary hypotheses findings indicated that significant differences existed among certain groups of students on post‐test scores. There were significant differences between females and males on the Perceived Vulnerability and Smoking Test measures between Spanish‐American and Anglo students on the Perceived Vulnerability and Smoking Test measures, and between students reading below grade level and those reading at or above grade level on the Smoking Test measure.