Document Type : Original Research Paper

Authors

Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Human Sciences, Arak University, Arak, Iran ‎

Abstract

Background and Objectives: School students are often exposed to health risks due to insufficient knowledge of personal hygiene and its methods. Problems caused by non-observance of personal hygiene appear serious in public health and play an important role in the spread of infectious diseases and the severance of social ties. The importance of studying and using comic strip media with health topics in education is that it provides an opportunity for the students to reflect on the effectiveness of medications, the pressures on patients and their families, and even on their inner experiences. Therefore, considering the importance of personal health education in sensitive childhood and school years, the present study was conducted to investigate the effect of education by comic strip personal health media on social skills of fourth-grade elementary students.
Methods: The present study is of applied type and based on quasi-experimental data collection criteria. The statistical population of the study was all fourth-grade students in Dezful in the academic year 2020-2021. The size of the statistical population was 1825 students. A total of 30 students were included in the sample and were randomly assigned to the experimental and control groups (15 in the experimental group and 15 in the control group). The tools used in this study were researcher-made comic strip media as well as the Garshasm and Priority’s (1990) Social Skills Questionnaire, which was completed in two stages: pre-test and post-test. The training program was performed in 8 sessions of 45 minutes for three weeks for the experimental group and the control group received no intervention. At the end of the intervention period, both groups were re-evaluated. In order to check the data, SPSS software (Version 22) and covariance method were analyzed. It should be noted that the assumptions of the test were tested by Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Levine tests.
Findings: The findings obtained after repeated analysis of data showed that there was a significant difference between the participants in the experimental group and the control group in terms of the rate of acquisition of social skills. The social skills of students who learned personal hygiene using comic strip media were higher than that of those students in the control group. Therefore, the use of intervention method (training by personal health comic strip media) was effective on the social skills variable (P≤0.05).
Conclusion: Using comic strip as an attractive visual medium to teach personal health content can strengthen the social skills of fourth-grade elementary students by actively interpreting incomplete frames of comic strip, and being actively engaged with the stories. And health narratives will interact, and as a result, their knowledge and literacy in how to create and promote desirable and healthy social skills in real-life situations will improve. Comic strip media seems to be a suitable tool and a good option for educating learners due to its objectivity and suitability to the stage of children's development; Therefore, it is suggested that the use of this new media be on the agenda of education in order to familiarize and deepen students' learning experiences in the field of social skills training.

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©2023 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers. 

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