Comparative study to assess the knowledge regarding child abuse among the parents residing in selected urban and rural areas with a view to develop an information booklet

Abstract

Background of the study: An emergency is a situation that possesses an immediate risk to health, life property or environment which have already caused by the loss of life, heath determinants, property damage. The emergency can be classified in to four sub divisions like, dangerous to life, heath, property, the environment. Child abuse concern with providing highly specialized health care to children of all ages. Parents are primary care takers of the children because usually the children depend on their Parents for fulfilling their needs. Especially mothers play a vital role in safeguarding their children against many kind of child abuse. So their knowledge regarding child abuse and their prevention is of vital important. Methodology: This was comparative study with 100 subjects, selected through simple random sampling technique. One group pre test post test without control group design was used. Data was collected by researcher himself by using structured closed ended Questionnaire and Interview methods. Data was analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistics in terms of mean, frequency distribution, percen tage ‘z’ test and chi -square test. Results: The levels of knowledge regarding child abuse among rural and urban mothers reveals that, most of rural mothers (56%) had poor knowledge, 40 percent of them had average knowledge, 4 percent of them had very poor knowledge and there were no mothers who had excellent & good knowledge regarding child abuse. Where as in urban area majority (64%) of the mothers had average knowledge, 32 percent of them had poor knowledge, 4 percent of them had good knowledge, and there were no mothers who had very poor & excellent knowledge regarding child abuse. The Comparison of knowledge level of rural and urban mothers reveals that, a statistically significant difference was found between the knowledge of rural mothers (13±4.2) and urban mothers (17.64±3.78) regarding child abuse at 0.05 level of significance [Z= 5.71]. It indicated that urban mothers had good knowledge regarding child abuse as compared to rural mothers hence there is a significant difference in knowledge regarding child abuse between mothers residing in selected rural and urban areas was accepted. Chi-square test was used, There is a significant association between knowledge of rural mothers and demographic variable like educational status (χ 2 = 3.8; P <0.05).Significant association was found between knowledge of urban mothers and demographic variables like Income (χ 2 = 4.7; P <0.05). Conclusion ; In pre test, more than half of respondents i.e. 52% had very poor knowledge where as in post test, tremendous increase by participants i.e. 66% had good and 26% had excellent knowledge, hence planned teaching programme was highly effective.