Development of a Standardized Scale about Knowledge and Attitude towards Sanitation and Personal Hygiene

Abstract

Access to safe water and sanitation for life is basic and fundamental human rights. Similarly healthy living depends upon some practice and principles of health and hygiene rules. So we cannot ignore the importance of personal hygiene in our life. There is a significant rise in the burden of communicable diseases due to poor personal hygiene. Schools becomes an active place for the transformation of infection between students and it also serves as a home for molding the knowledge and attitude of students towards sanitation and personal hygiene. In India, the parasitic and intestinal infections are quite prevalent because of the lack of personal hygiene. Therefore, it is of utmost essential to measure the knowledge and attitude towards sanitation and personal hygiene among school students. The main objective of this study is to assess the quality of items for preparation of a standardized tool on knowledge and attitude towards sanitation and personal hygiene of higher secondary grade students. To assess the knowledge and attitude towards sanitation and personal hygiene, the investigator prepared a self-made questionnaire. To achieve the pre-determined objectives of the study, the scale was administered on higher secondary grade students of Nadia district. The scale consists of thirty two (32) knowledge items and thirty one (31) attitude items regarding sanitation and personal hygiene. The difficulty index and discrimination index of each item was determined and on the basis of this indices value, seven (7) knowledge items and five (5) attitude items were rejected. Finally twenty five (25) knowledge items and twenty six (26) attitude items were selected in the final form of the scale. To determine the reliability of the test, a test was applied two times on the same group between fifteen (15) days gap through the use of test- retest method. Pearson’s product moment method was used to determine the correlation between two set of scores. The coefficient of correlation of the scale was found as 0.76 and 0.82 respectively for knowledge and attitude scale which is highly significant. It has been revealed that item analysis and test reliability play a crucial role in constructing a scale.