Health promotion using television in hospital waiting rooms: the Adelaide Children's Parent Education Project.

OBJECTIVES

The Adelaide Children's Hospital Parent Education Project was designed to determine the effect of the screening of health promotion programmes via closed circuit television facilities in hospital waiting rooms on parents' knowledge of child health issues.

METHODOLOGY

A knowledge test was constructed with an internal consistency co-efficient of 0.95 and used to identify target groups of parents with low knowledge. The education programmes screened were aimed at the knowledge deficits. To assess the effects of the programmes an experiment was conducted using a post-test only/control group design, including a time delay. Days of the week were assigned randomly to programme days when health education programmes were screened and non-programme days when normal television programmes were screened. The experimental group was selected randomly from the attendance registers on programme days and the control group from non-programme days.

RESULTS

The experimental group of parents gained substantial increases in knowledge with some knowledge scores increasing by nearly 70%. Overall there was a statistically significant difference between the knowledge scores of experimental and control groups. The recall of programme content by parents was notable in view of the fact that because of waiting times most only viewed part of the education programmes. Health-promoting behaviour changes were also reported.

CONCLUSIONS

The screening of health programmes via hospital waiting room television significantly increases the health knowledge of viewers, although there is a decline over time.