Effectiveness of Structured Teaching Programme on Knowledge Regarding Disaster and Disaster Preparedness among School Going Children

Abstract

Introduction: A disaster is an extreme description of the functioning of a society that causes widespread human, material, or environment losses that exceed the ability of the affected society to cope using only its own resources. Incidents such as cyclones, landslides and hurricanes, by themselves are not contemplated as natural catastrophe. Rather, they become disasters when they adversely and seriously affect human life, livelihood and property. Disaster alertness, therefore, attempt to ready for and minimize these unfavorable events. Methodology: Pre experimental one group pre-test post-test study was undertaken to assess the effectiveness of structured teaching programme on knowledge regarding disaster and disaster preparedness among school going children, Gurugram, Haryana. Total 60 study participants were selected by purposive sampling technique and data was collected by using a self-structured knowledge questionnaire. Result: The findings of the study revealed that half of the participants (53.3%) had good knowledge regarding disaster and disaster preparedness in the pre-test. Similarly, the post-test scores depicted that majority (50%) had very good and good knowledge regarding disaster and disaster preparedness. Most of the demographic variable was not significantly associated with level of pre knowledge of school going children regarding disaster and disaster preparedness except class/standard p = .000 was found to statistically significant at 0.05 level of significance. There was significant difference between the knowledge of school going children before and after the implementation of structured teaching programme (t = 19.520, p =.000). Conclusion: It was concluded that structured teaching programme was an effective strategy which can help to increase school going children knowledge regarding disaster and disaster preparedness.