Effects of an Eye Care Program on Eye Screening Ability and Eye Care of Primary School Teachers in Songkhla Province

Abstract

The aim of this quasi-experimental research was to study the effects of an eye care program on the eyescreening ability and eye care behaviors of primary  school teacher.† The sample groups consisted of 100teachers. Simple random sampling was used to select the control and experimental groups. The experimentalgroup (50 teachers)  received eye care education for 6 months and a follow-up session 10 months. The controlgroup (50 teachers ) did not participate in the eye care program.  Group sizes were calculated using poweranalysis. Research instruments consisted of eye screening equipment, an eye care record form, and acomputer-assisted instruction (CAI) program on eye care.  The effective criteria of the programûs content was evaluated as 81/83.33 (mean test scores before and after studying the program).  The test was validated bythree experts: an ophthalmologist and two nurse practitioners. The Kuder-Richardson coefficient was 0.81.This study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Nursing, Prince of SongklaUniversity, Thailand. The data were analyzed by frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, kappa statisticsand independent t-test.When testing the concordance between the results of eye screenings done by nurse practitioners and thoseby the teachers, it was found that the teachers were able to perform eye screening correctly  very high (kappavalue, 0.80). The mean scores of the teachersû eye care behaviors in the experimental group were higher thanthose of the control group (P <0.05).