Raising awareness on cyber safety: adolescents’ experience of a primary healthcare professional-led, school-based, multi-center intervention
-
Zoi Tsimtsiou
, Evangelos Drosos
, Anastasios Drontsos , Anna-Bettina Haidich , Fotini Dantsi , Zafiria Sekeri , Theodoros Dardavesis , Panagiotis Nanos and Malamatenia Arvanitidou
Abstract
Purpose
Although safe Internet use is an emerging public health issue, there is a scarcity of published work describing relevant school-based interventions. The objective of this study was to explore the impact of a health professional-led, school-based intervention in raising awareness on cyber-safety in adolescents, Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate adolescents’ evaluation of this school-based intervention, 6 months after its implementation, as well as the impact of adolescents’ school class and gender on their evaluation.
Methods
A student sample was selected using a multistage stratified random sampling technique, according to the location and school grade level (middle, high school). The students – aged from 12 to 18 years old experienced an interactive presentation in their classrooms on the amount of time spent online, the use of social networks and the available support services. An evaluation tool was completed anonymously and voluntarily 6 months after the intervention.
Results
Four hundred and sixty-two students (response rate 90.7%, 246 middle, 216 high school) completed the evaluation tool. Younger students, especially the ones in the first year of middle school, scored significantly higher in all six parameters used in the evaluation of this intervention compared with all the older participants: (a) they had kept the presented information on Safeline and Saferinternet websites and the helpline Ypostirizo (70.2% vs. 33.7%, p < 0.001) (b) they had already used it (32.5% vs. 12.3%, p < 0.001), (c) they had learned new information on cyber safety (66.4% vs. 34%, p < 0.001), (d) they rated the intervention as more interesting (median 8 vs. 7, p < 0.05), (e) they had reconsidered the way they use Internet (median 7 vs. 6, p < 0.05) and (f) they had changed their cyber behavior (median 7 vs. 5, p < 0.05).
Conclusion
The active involvement of students in a discussion on cyber-safety based on their experiences was highly evaluated. The impact of the intervention on the youngest students underlines the need for raising awareness on cyber-safety and support services, earlier in the students’ life.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank all the primary healthcare professionals who were involved as educators for their enthusiasm in this study and all the students and teachers who participated. We would like to specially thank Dr. George Kormas for all his guidance and precious help in developing the training curriculum for this intervention and training the health care professionals-educators.
References
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©2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial
- Clinical diagnostic suspicion: a key component to being a modern Argus in medicine!
- Original Articles
- Ecological perspectives on youth alcohol consumption in the Kuala Lumpur conurbation: a place-based study in Malaysia
- Pubertal assessment: targeted educational intervention for pediatric trainees
- Pediatric providers’ attitudes and practices regarding concussion diagnosis and management
- Pre- and post-exercise electrocardiogram pattern modifications in apparently healthy school adolescents in Cameroon
- Raising awareness on cyber safety: adolescents’ experience of a primary healthcare professional-led, school-based, multi-center intervention
- Comparison of different volumes of high intensity interval training on cardiac autonomic function in sedentary young women
- Rate of teenage pregnancy in Jordan and its impact on maternal and neonatal outcomes
- Metabolic syndrome, leptin-insulin resistance and uric acid: a trinomial foe for Algerian city-dweller adolescents’ health
- Life satisfaction and its relationship with spiritual well-being and religious practice in Iranian adolescent girls
- Subjective social status and its relationship to health and health behavior: comparing two different scales in university students
- Case Report
- Gastric cancer in a teenager: a case report