The effect of virtual drug abuse prevention education on the knowledge and attitude of Iranian street children.

BACKGROUND

Streets are homes for millions of homeless children and adolescents who are exposed to a lot of social harms such as substance abuse. Education to prevent social problems and familiarity with the consequences of these problems are necessary to improve the knowledge and attitudes of these children toward health. Due to the importance of drug prevention education for children, this study was conducted to investigate the effect of drug abuse prevention education on the knowledge and attitudes of street children.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The present quasi-experimental study was conducted on 54 street children under the Welfare Support Center in Kerman City in southeastern Iran. Children were randomly divided into two groups: intervention and control (27 participants in each group). Educational program to prevent drug abuse was conducted in three modules for a total of 120 minutes using a virtual electronic learning method (11 movies and animations) for the intervention group. One month after the program, the knowledge and attitude of both groups were re-evaluated by the Iranian Drug Abuse Assessment Questionnaire.

RESULTS

In the post-test stage, the knowledge scores of street children in the intervention group (28.14 ± 1.09) were significantly higher than those in the pre-test stage (21.11 ± 6.65) and control group (22.18 ± 1.27) ( = 0.001). In the post-test stage, the participants' attitude scores (toward substance abuse significantly changed in the intervention group (25.18 ± 2.86) compared to the pre-test (36.94 ± 3.76) and ( = 0.001), but these scores were not significantly different from the control group (25.71 ± 2.84) ( = 0.90).

CONCLUSIONS

Considering that drug abuse prevention education had a significant effect on improving the knowledge and attitude of street children, authorities of the street children protection centers and educators specializing in this field are recommended to hold such educational programs for street children. Furthermore, the street children protection centers should implement the required instructions and regulations to conduct these educational programs.