Effect of Health Education Program by Applying of Life Skills and Participatory Learning Process for Promoting Smoking Behavior Prevention among Students in a Secondary School

Abstract

This quasi-experimental research aimed to study the effect of health education by
applying life skills and a participatory learning process for preventing secondary
school children from smoking. Seventy students participated in the project. They
were divided into two groups of 35 students for each group. The experimental
group was exposed to a health education program for 12 weeks including lectures,
brain storming, group discussion, role playing games, and demonstrations about
the ill effect of smoking. Data were collected by a questionnaire and were analyzed by
common descriptive statistics. Estimative analysis were used by applying a paired
sample t-test and independent sample t-test at 0.05 level of significance. The results
found that the experimental group developed significantly higher life skills such as
critical - and creative thinking, self awareness empathy, self esteem and social
responsibility, decision making-problem solving capabilities, improved
interpersonal relationship-communication and diminished intention to start
smoking. The results significantly differed from the control group (p-value<0.001).