Development and Testing of a Health Education Program for Immigrant Women Married to Koreans

여성결혼이민자를 위한 건강교육프로그램 개발 및 효과검증

Purpose: To assess the effectiveness of an 8-session health education program to promote the health of married immigrant women. Methods: A quasi-experimental research design was employed. The subjects included 36 female marriage immigrant women (17 in the experimental group and 19 in the control group) who agreed to participate in this study. The intervention involved 8 sessions with a partnership strategy and was led by Public Health Nurses and the researcher. Our analysis included descriptive statistics, Fisher's exact test, t-test, and Pearson correlation coefficients. Results: The results revealed significant mean differences in terms of self-efficacy between the two groups. The mean of their self-efficacy was higher in the experimental group than in the control group, whereas there no mean differences were detected between the two groups in terms of health knowledge and self-esteem. Additionally, the knowledge of the immigrant women was correlated with their self-efficacy. Conclusion: The 8-session health education program was found to have an effect on self-efficacy, even with the limitations to methodological rigors posed by the subject-specific conditions. In the future, health education materials written in the native language of such women will need to be develop. Additionally, repeated studies will be required that involve randomized controlled trials characterized by better methodological strength and strategies to enhance participants’ interests and motives.