J Korean Community Nurs.  2001 Sep;12(2):397-405.

The Effect of Visual Health Promotion Program in Elementary School-Age Children

• Oh JJ
• Shin HS

Abstract

The vision disturbances of school- age children has been recognized as and important school health problem. As the visual disturbances of the school-age children is recognized as the nation's health problem, the importance of the development of educational program for visual health should be emphasized. Recently, eyeball movement and other visual health management method has been introduced for prevention or recovery of decrease in visual acuity. But, the effect of eyeball movement was not confirmed yet. And, the controversy around the treatment effect is continued. The decrease of visual acuity is one of the important school health problem as well as it causes discomfort in daily life of the students. So, it should be considered as an important subject for school health and there is a need to develop an effective intervention program for visual health. The purpose of this study is to develop and evaluate the program with the recognition of the need of the intervention for visual health. The visual health promotion program was developed by the researcher and the program was initiated by the school. Nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest design was applied for study which examined the effect of the visual health promotion program. The subjects were 742 children (experimental group: 398; control group: 344). The experiment was composed of health education and eyeball movement. Health education was provided 5 times to the children in the class room. Children of experimental group exercised eyeball movement in the class, watching video for 10 minutes two times a day. The exercise was continued for 10 weeks. The result of the study were as follows. 1) change of visual acuity Before the intervention, mean of the visual acuity was .86 for the experimental group and .91 for control group. After the intervention, mean of visual acuity was .95 for the experimental group and .90 for the control group. There was no significant difference in the change of visual acuity between experimental and control group. 2) change of refraction. In the experimental group, 327 eyes (41.08%) were normal vision and 469 eyes (58.98%) were eyes of refraction errors. 38.82% of the total eyes were myopia. There was no significant change in the refraction in the children with myopia after the intervention. 3) Awareness of visual acuity, change of knowledge, behavior, and attitude (1) After the intervention, there was a significant difference in the awareness of visual acuity (experimental group: 70.10%, control group: 50.97%, p<.01). (2) After the intervention, there was a significant knowledge increase in the experimental group (p<.01). (3) There was no significant difference in the visual health behavior after the intervention. (4) There was a significant positive change in the attitude related to visual health in the experimental group (p<.05). 4) There was a significant positive change in the subjective discomfort of the students. But, there was no significant change in the objective eye symptom after the intervention. Even though there was no effect in the visual acuity and the change of the refraction, subjective visual health as well as the attitude and knowledge of the children and parents toward visual health was improved significantly. Also, there was an increase in the intention of change and the awareness for the visual health management. It is suggested that various educational strategies for visual health promotion should be developed and examined for the visual health promotion of the students.

MeSH Terms

Child*
Health Behavior
Health Education
Health Promotion*
Humans
Intention
Myopia
Parents
School Health Services
Visual Acuity