Impact of a school-based sexual abuse prevention education program on the knowledge and attitude of high school girls

Abstract

Sexual abuse has been considered a public health issue because of the various health implications resulting from it. The school nurse has a responsibility in assisting the high school girl to prevent victimization. This study adopted a quasi-experimental design in which a sexual abuse prevention education package was developed and used to educate high school girls in a selected school in Nigeria. Evaluation of the impact of the package revealed a significant increase in the knowledge mean scores of the girls at first postintervention stage and this increase was maintained at second postintervention stage. No significant shift was observed for the attitude of the girls. Education is a significant tool that could be used in improving the knowledge of sexual abuse prevention among high school girls, but attitude supporting sexual abuse prevention can only be improved when myths of sexual abuse are corrected in the larger society.