The Effect of Mother’s Education on Sexual Education of Preschool Children Based on Health Belief Model

Abstract

Aims: Nowadays the necessity of informing children of various ages about sexual issues is felt more than ever before. The present study has been conducted to determine the effect of the mothers’ education on the preschool children’s sexual training based on the health belief model. Methods: the present study is experimental intervention research performed on 144 mothers with preschool children in 2020 in Sanandaj. The participants were randomly selected from 12 preschools by multi-stage cluster sampling method. The intervention was conducted through the use of a combination of in-person and remote training according to the constructs of the health belief model. The data were collected by the use of a researcher-constructed questionnaire the validity and reliability of which have been assessed and confirmed and subsequently analyzed using SPSS, version 23, through the descriptive and analytical statistics, including chi-square tests, fisher’s exact test and t-test, one-way variance analysis, and LSD follow-up test and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. Findings: the study results indicated that the mean values of the scores calculated for knowledge and perceived susceptibility constructs, perceived barriers, cues to action, and perceived self-efficacy in the intervention group’s mothers following training were significantly higher than those of the control group (p<0.05). Conclusions: the results of this study showed that 3 training sessions with the design of health belief model structures in mothers are effective in performing sexual education of children.