A Study to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Educational Interventions Regarding Protection against Digital Abuse on Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice among Adolescents in Puducherry

Ab s t r Ac t Background: Digital abuse happens when children and adolescents use mobile phones, networking, social, and other communication media to threaten or aggressively abuse someone. Digital abuse starts with few text messages per day, which can turn into hundreds. The abusers look for things like the passwords of other person and intimate photos. Abusers may spread rumors, pretend to be someone else, or even blackmail. In most cases, the abuse is very sensitive and emotional. Materials and methods: A quasi-experimental research design with quantitative approach was used for the study. The systematic random sampling was used to select 100 adolescents for the study. The pretest data were conducted by using a structured questionnaire for knowledge, a rating scale for attitude, and a checklist for practice. On the same day, educational interventions were given to 25 students from the list of students put in an alphabetical order. Each session consists of 1-hour structured teaching session, which includes PowerPoint presentation, videos, and pamphlet distribution regarding digital abuse and its protective measures. After 1 week, the knowledge, attitude, and practice regarding protection against digital abuse were assessed by using the same structured questionnaire for knowledge, rating scale for attitude, checklist for practice, and the posttest was conducted. Results: The study findings revealed that mean knowledge was 7.72 and 16.73, respectively, with standard deviation 2.948 and 4.778 in preand posttest, which was found highly statistically significant at the p < 0.001*** level. In attitude, mean was 47.26 and 57.29 in preand posttest, respectively, with standard deviation 4.627 and 7.616, which was found highly statistically significant at the p < 0.001*** level. In practice, mean was 6.28 and 7.44 in preand posttest, respectively, with standard deviation 1.944 and 1.766, which was found highly statistically significant at the p < 0.001*** level. Also, there is a strong relationship between knowledge, attitude, and practice among adolescents. Conclusion: Educational interventions were effective in improving the knowledge, attitude, and good practice of adolescents on protection against digital abuse.