Teaching changes interest and attitudes of students towards bedbugs

Abstract

ABSTRACT Parasites evoke an array of emotions that subsequently can govern our action as well as our precautionary measures. If parasites are unknown, an important question is how people can be educated about this parasite. Bedbugs are blood-sucking human parasites that (i) stigmatise hosts, (ii) are hardly correctly identified by people in the western world and (iii) have seemingly undergone a huge resurgence. Here, we study how education influences students̕ beliefs and attitudes towards bedbugs. A biology lesson for students aged 14–16, where we showed living bedbugs and taught about their biology, served as a test. We measured pre- and post-test affective, behavioural and cognitive components of attitudes and interest. Learners showed a significantly higher post-test interest in bedbugs compared to pre-test interest. In the pre-test, 98% of learners did not identify the bedbug correctly and partly had wrong ideas about the reasons for its spread. The post-test revealed a negative, and significantly reduced affective component of attitudes, compared to the pre-test. The behavioural component, expressed in proactive behaviour, increased significantly. These results show that teaching episodes sensibilise learners to bedbugs. This may be important to society to help reduce the stigmata unjustly associated with some human parasites.